2 August 2006

The South African K4 canoeing team has come away from a highly competitive international competition in Spain with the silver medal, after narrowly losing to the hosts over the two-race contest.

The team of Ant Stott, Matt Boumann, Michael Arthur and Shaun Biggs flew to Spain to represent South Africa in the annual Castile and Leon International Grand Prix in Valladolid, where they raced against several top teams from Spain, Great Britain, Hungary, Sweden and a number of other European nations.

The South African team, which is committed to qualifying a K4 for South Africa at the Beijing Olympic Games, finished second in the first race of the event, after a thrilling showdown with the top Spanish K4, over the six-kilometre course.

'It was an awesome race'
"It was an awesome race!" said Shaun Biggs from Spain.

"We had a really great start, and pulled for the first two kilometres of the race, and only the top Spanish boat was able to stay with us."

However, the South Africans then ran into technical problems with the steering of their K4, which hampered them tactically in the closing stages of the race.

They went into the final straight alongside the Spanish boat, and narrowly lost the end-sprint to the host crew.

"It was really fast, and we were thrilled with our race," said Biggs, before the team set off for the second race in the series, in the mountains at Sanabria.

Lost in the dying stages
In that race they hoped to square matters with the Spanish national team, and were locked in a similar tussle for the leads throughout, before losing in the dying stages, and collecting another silver medal, with the Hungarians taking the bronze medal.

The pair of silver medals secured the overall second place in the Grand Prix for South Africa behind Spain, with the Spanish club team from Aviles taking third, Hungary fourth and Great Britain fifth.

The K4 team now heads for a camp in Szolnok where they will continue their preparations for the World Sprint Championships in Hungary in two weeks time.

Source: Canoeing South Africa

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