News

August 27, 2009

The Canoe/Kayak venue was once again dominated by Mother Nature as high winds and the resultant rough waters created extremely  challenging conditions for all paddlers. Despite the conditions Trista Neilly handled all that was thrown at her in the Womens K-1 2000M event and won Gold, her third medal, to go with the Gold and Bronze medals she collected on Tuesday. Trista also advanced to the finals of the K-2 200M event with Megan Gibson. The results for the rest of the 2000m races were -  4th for Mattison Sinnett and Dylan Wall in the K-2, 4th for Jenna Berenbaum and Lorelei Hitchings in the C-2, 5th for Iain McLeod and Riley Schnell in the C-2, and 6th for Christopher Laplante in the C-1. Ashley Holowatuk (C-1), Shylo Wollf (K-1) and Zara Hanson/Chelsey Mitchell (K-2) were all victims of the Southwest Rivers frothy waves and DNF despite terrific efforts to right their boats and get back into the race.

This was the second straight day that the course proved to be challenging for the paddlers. Wednesdays high winds and waves  caused the Race Officials to end the day after only 7 preliminary races. Given this scenario the Officials had no choice but to plunge ahead today. The teams were allowed to make minor modifications to their boats to attempt to keep the waves out of the cockpit. This sent the paddlers to their respective team areas to use the materials available to develop and install shields for the afternoons grueling 2000M events.

The Team Sask paddlers head into the final day of competition on  Friday with high hopes and some good opportunities to add to the 4 medals they have collected to this point. The team is represented in all 8 of the 200M finals in the morning, and 6 of the 10 1000M finals in the afternoon.