14 July 2003

Hank McGregor showcased the form that could take him to the Athens Olympics with a staggering victory in the Men’s Health Scottburgh to Brighton ski race, in the process winning the inaugural SA single ski championship title.

The 25-year old Durbanite, who has been focussing on his flatwater sprint paddling for the past two years, led from the start to finish, on a borrowed ski, and paddled into the finish at Brighton just five minutes shy of the course record.

Paddling in mild weather conditions, with no wind and very little downwind swell to help the massive field of 264 paddlers, the race quickly separated into two tactical assaults. McGregor and class Cape paddler Dawid Mocke stayed fairly close inshore, while Herman Chalupsky moved around 600 metres further out to sea, looking for more help from the swell.

But McGregor never let his grasp on the race slip, and once he and Mocke had reached the beach stop at Amanzimtoti, roughly an hour from the finish, McGregor raced away to notch up a three minute win, using the lethal speed that his sprint training has developed.

Mocke was second, followed by seasoned ski ace Daryl Bartho, and then Herman Chalupsky The K2 race was won by the Bruss brothers, Sven and Deon, from Greytown, who are in training for their Avon Descent bid next month. They were fifth overall. Molokai champ Oscar Chalupsky was in sixth overall, and the first Veteran to the finish.

Donia Kamstra took the ladies K1 gold ahead of Cape speedster Kim Rew, while Cape sensational Simon van Gysen, another member of the national sprint training squad, took the juniors laurels in a very impressive eighth place finish overall.

"Thrilled"
“I am thrilled with the way I went”, said McGregor afterwards. “I knew that I had the speed and the kick, but it was fantastic to feel that I had plenty in reserve after a few hours of hard racing. I was actually quite taken aback!”, he said. McGregor now holds the SA K1 Marathon Championship title, SA1000m K1 Sprint title, and SA K1 Ski title. He plans to race the Lowveld Croc SA K1 River Champs in October to wrap up a clean sweep of national K1 titles.

McGregor’s return to ski racing in the past fortnight ends an 18-month layoff from ski racing to concentrate on his bid to qualify for the Athens Olympics. Now part of the NOCSA Operation Excellence squad, he hopes to qualify a boat for South Africa at the showcase games, by making the world top 18 at the World Championships in the USA in September.

“I actually don’t even own a ski right now!”, McGregor admitted sheepishly after the win. “My ski was cut up in the process of building the K1 sit-on-top river boat that I used in the Fish two years ago. So I had to borrow a ski from Ken Holden for this race”, he said.

Double Olympic medallist Greg Barton was also part of the race, having arrived in South Africa a few days before. “I was impressed by the depth of the top racers in the event”, he said. “It would have been great to have some of the top internationals that race an event like the Molokai in the field, but I was really impressed by the standard of racing amongst the top twenty, who were right up there all the time”, he added.

The race also features an annual challenge between the runners and the paddlers. This year McGregor pipped the top runner Vusi Myandu to the finish by twenty minutes. The KZN A team took the provincial team title.

Results

	Double Olympic gold medallist Greg Barton said he was really impressed by the standard of racing.

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