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PADDLES chopped up the water at Zandvlei, with furious racing in the annual Western Cape Canoe Championships over the weekend.

Out of these championships, a Western Cape Canoe Union team will be chosen to participate in the SA Canoe Marathon championships, to be held in Witbank over the weekend of 25 May.

On Saturday, a mass start saw some 80 paddlers take off from in front of the Peninsula Canoe Club in the K1 (single canoe) event. Each age division paddled their different distances.

In the senior men?s K1 event, the top canoeists made known their intentions from the starters gun, as the likes of Graeme Solomon (Peninsula), Lance King (Milnerton) Heinrich Schlom (Stellenbosch) and Ian Trautmann (Peninsula) formed the front diamond. This diamond was maintained until the first portage (on lap one), where Trautmann dropped off, but the leading group waited for him to catch up. This did not last though, as at the turning buoy in front of the clubhouse, signalling the end of lap one, a breakaway by Solomon, King and Schloms saw Trautmann fall off the slip.

The next seven laps remained with these three dominating the field. With 300m to go of the 35km course, King showed his hand by initiating the final sprint for the line.

However, the experience and class of Solomon saw him take up the challenge to beat the youngster on this final, exciting sprint to record a time of 02:47:43. King finished seconds later with a time of 02:47:54 Schloms, who had paddled well throughout the event, was unable to handle the pace of this sprint but was rewarded with the final podium position with a time of 02:48:19.

In the ladies K1 event it was one-way traffic for Peninsula Canoe Club's 2008 Olympian, Nikki Mocke, who only had the men to offer her competition, finishing in 02:12:48. Alexa Lombard-Cole (Peninsula), Abbey Miedema (Harmony) and Michelle Eray (Knynsa) did not paddle the event.

Bianca Beavitt (Milnerton) grabbed second in 02:19:03, whilst Rebecca Newson from Peninsula was third in 02:27:38. On Sunday, the K2 combination of Solomon and King were the obvious favourites (they were the 2007 champions in K2), but were given a good run for their money by the experienced and talented Stellenbosch crew of Ernest van Riet and Heinrich Schloms.

Solomon and King proved to be too strong, though, and retained their championship title from 2007, whilst Van Riet and Schloms finished second. The u/21 duo of Andrew Birkett (UCT) and Pierre-Andre Rabie (Stellenbosch) took third place.

Niki Fischer (Har) and Beavitt claimed victory in the women's K2, with the team of Megan Kelly and Jemma Hofmeyer (Pen) in second. Rebecca Newson and Liz Hart (Pen) finished third.

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