World Cup Marathon Report
Posted by David Francis on 15 June 2009We had just one paddler, Joe Murphy of Salmon Leap Canoe Club, flying the flag for Ireland at the World Cup Marathon at Bagsværd lake, Denmark last weekend. Joe paddled early Saturday morning in the Junior K1 class, up against some very strong competition from the host nation Denmark, Spain, Sweden and Australia. Conditions were very nasty with a 14m/s gusty wind meaning the course was very lumpy and wash-hanging very difficult. Joe got off to a proverbial flier, but unfortunately his allocated starting position on the extreme right hand side meant that it was difficult to get in onto the lead washes. As he moved over to the main pack, he found himself in the choppy back washes and unfortunately lost contact with the first group. The leading Danish paddler pushed very hard for the first 2 laps, splitting the race up and meaning that the pace didn’t slow at the front, which may have given a chance for those just off the pace to catch up. On the pen-ultimate lap, one of the Spanish paddlers put the hammer down and managed to bridge the gap resulting in a lead pack of 3, 2 danes and himself. Joe was paddling strongly in 7th position with a Swedish paddler for company. Joe was portaging extremely quickly, and if the swede could have done similarly, I’m sure they could have caught up on 1 or 2 of the paddlers in front. Wisely Joe saw that the swede was not pulling his weight and he broke away on the pen-ultimate portage to make sure it wouldn’t come down to a sprint finish. The battle up front for the medals really heated up on the last portage, 1 km before the finish, the dane ran strongly to steal 20m on the Spanish paddler getting back into the boat. The Spaniard fought his way back onto the wash by the last turn, but with 500m to go the effort to get back told, and the Dane sprinted away to the gold medal. Joe finished about 5 mins. down on the winner, a great performance considering he still has another year to go as a junior. Personally, I really enjoyed watching the racing, especially the junior race where we had Joe racing in Irish colours. It would have been great to see a few Irish paddlers in the senior race too.... has sprinting killed all interest in marathon? I hope not....