SA K4 crew star at Duisberg WC
31 May 2005
A newly formed K4 crew starred for the South African canoeing team on the weekend by winning the B final of the 500 metres at the fiercely competitive Duisburg World Cup regatta in Germany.
The combination of Ant Stott, Brett Bartho, Michael Arthur and Matt Bouman won the B final by more than a boat length from classy Polish and Bulgarian crews to wrap up an impressive three weeks abroad for the fledgling outfit.
They narrowly missed out on making the A final, which was effectively a rerun of the Olympic Games 500m K4 final, but made up for that by dominating the B final, which they led from start to finish.
'Improving all the time'
"They are improving all the time, and are feeling very positive about their results," said coach Nandor Almasi from the regatta course.
The K4 crew recorded a blisteringly fast time of one minute 25 seconds for their 500 metres semi-final, finishing just over a second behind
the Olympic champion Polish crew after having led through the 250-metre mark.
Capetonian Nikki Mocke produced another excellent result by racing into the B final of the women's 1 000 metres K1 event, where she finished fifth.
"It was a very tough regatta," Almasi said. "Forty nations entered, and most of them entered two boats into every event, which made the field very tough indeed. Making an A or a B final is a very good result."
Tantalizingly close
A number of other South African boats came tantalizingly close to making finals at the event.
Both the 1 000m K2 crews of Shaun Rubenstein and Michael Mbanjwa, and the pairing of Hein van Rooyen and Dawie Gerber, made the semi-finals, with Rubenstein and Mbanjwa missing the B final cut by the slimmest of margins.
Scott Humphrey was leading his 200 metres men's K1 semi-final, and apparently heading for his first ever A final, when a missed paddle stroke saw him almost capsize
20 metres from the finish. He recovered to finish sixth, with five boats passing him in less than a second, one of them being team-mate Dawie Gerber, who finished third.
Shaun Rubenstein failed to make the cut for the finals after finishing sixth in a loaded 500m men's K1 semi-final.
Just missed out
Dawid Mocke and Graeme Solomon both raced into the semi-finals of the 1 000m singles, but fell just short of cracking the nod for the lineup for the two finals.
C1 paddlers Marcus Melck and Thyssen Burger both excelled by racing into the semi-finals of the tough 500 men's C1 competition, a milestone for the emergence of the C-boat discipline in South Africa.
The K4 crew has made arrangements to have their brand new state-of-the-art K4 kayak flown back to South Africa, and to have access to another K4 for their competition in Europe, to enable them to prepare for the world championships in Croatia in August.
Source: Canoeing South Africa
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