By Martin Cleary
They’re sprint canoe-kayak paddlers, but they’re now in a mighty marathon mission they hope will lift them to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympic or Paralympic Games.
Canada’s elite senior Olympic and Paralympic paddlers, like their worldwide counterparts, started this long and involved qualifying process last summer to earn national quota positions in the five men’s and five women’s Olympic races and 10 Paralympic competitions on the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium waterway in France.
The athletes who earned the quota spots so far for Canada are now battling with their peers to see who seizes the Olympic team berths over a series of races, which started this week with the first national team trials in Chula Vista, California.
The first round of Olympic quota qualifying for sprint canoe-kayak athletes was at the 2023 International Canoe Federation world championships in Duisburg, Germany, in August. There were 162 quota spots (individual and team) available for 117 male and 117 female athletes in the men’s and women’s kayak single (K1), kayak double (K2), kayak four (K4), canoe single (C1) and canoe double (C2).
On the Paralympic side, the top six athletes in each of their 10 world championship races earned a paracanoe quota berth for their country.
Canada did extremely well at last year’s world championships, whether it was qualifying Olympic and Paralympic quota berths or winning medals.
While Canada finished third overall in the medal standings with three gold, two silver and two bronze and fourth in the points standings behind Hungary, Germany and Spain, it saw 12 of its national-team athletes score Olympic quota berths in four women’s and one men’s race.
Ottawa’s Brianna Hennessy led Canada’s three-medal performance at worlds in the Paralympic races with a silver-medal effort in the women’s VL2 women’s 200 metres and a bronze in the KL1 200 metres. Her results also gave Canada a racing berth in the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8.
Canada’s only medal in an Olympic quota qualifying race at the world championships came in the women’s C2 500 metres, where Sloan Mackenzie and Katie Vincent captured the bronze medal.
The other Canadian paddlers to secure Olympic quotas were: Sophia Jensen of Chelsea, PQ, and the Cascades Club, women’s C1 200 metres; Michelle Russell, women’s K1 500 metres; Natalie Davison and Toshka Besharah-Hrebacka, both from the Rideau Canoe Club, Courtney Stott and Riley Melanson, women’s K4 500 metres; and Nicholas Matveev, Pierre-Luc Poulin, Laurent Lavigne and Simon McTavish, men’s K4 500 metres.
Depending on their discipline, these Canadian athletes finished anywhere between fifth and 10th at the 2023 worlds to pick up an Olympic quota berth.
That group of 12 could grow larger as Canoe Kayak Canada will send a team to the Americas Continental Olympic qualifier and Pan-American championships on April 23-25 in Sarasota, Florida, to chase more quota berths for Paris.
While the national association continues to strive for more Olympic and Paralympic quota placings, its high-performance athletes are paddling hard to convert one of those quota spots into their ticket to represent Canada at their respective Summer Games.
The first on-water test was this week’s opening national team trials. Six Olympic and two Paralympic paddlers from Ottawa and area sprinted over the Chula Vista, California, course. It’s part of a series of Olympic and Paralympic races to find the best Canadian paddlers for the Games.
Canoe Kayak Canada is scheduled to announce its teams next week for the next two racing challenges – the World Cup sprint regatta May 10-12 and the 2024 Paracanoe world championships May 9-11 in Szeged, Hungary.
The second and final national team trials will be staged June 21-23 at the Olympic Basin in Montreal. The Paris Olympics are slated for July 26 to Aug. 11 with the canoe-kayak races scheduled for the second week, Aug. 6-10.
At the first national team trials, Jensen gave a strong performance in her bid to earn her first Olympic assignment in the C1 200-metre and/or C2 500-metre boats. Women’s canoe racing made its debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with only two races compared to five kayak races for women.
Jensen, who has had three recent training camps on the California waterway, placed second in all three of her races. Her performances should qualify her for the national team to the season’s only World Cup in Szeged.
She won her C1 200-metre heat in a world-class time of 44.944 seconds, which eclipsed her target goal of going under 45 seconds. In the final, she placed second in 46.003 seconds, while Vincent, the world C1 500-metre and 5,000-metre champion, won in 44.588 seconds.
The C1 500-metre final produced the same Vincent-Jensen 1-2 finish – 2:07.853 to 2:09.608 respectively. The 500-metre race is a non-Olympic event.
In the women’s C2 500 metres, Jensen and long-time partner Julia Lilley-Osende were less than a second behind winners Mackenzie and Vincent – 1:59.296 to 1:58.326.
Rideau’s Evie McDonald also competed in the women’s canoe class with a pair of B-final, second-place results over 200 metres (49.11 seconds) and 500 metres (2:20.166). She also teamed with Jacy Grant, the women’s C1 1,000-metre world champion, to finish third in the C2 500 metres (2:12.476).
Madeline Schmidt, who earned gold and silver medals at the 2023 worlds in the Unified K2 200 metres and K1 5,000 metres respectively, had a best showing of third in the K1 500-metre A final (1:56.479). She also won the K1 500-metre B final on the opening day of the national trials with a faster time (1:55.918). The Rideau kayaker and clubmate Maren Bradley were third in the K2 A final over 500 metres (1:50.414).
Bradley raced in two K1 500-metre B finals, recording a second-place result (1:58.332) and a third (1:57.903).
Davison and Rideau teammate Stott won the women’s K2 500 metres (1:48.809). In her two K1 500-metre races, she was fourth in the A final (1:57.831) and first in a B final (1:56.632).
Besharah-Hrebacka of Rideau and Melanson were runners-up in the K2 500-metre A final (1:49.839). In her two K1 500-metre B finals, Besharah-Hrebacka was second (1:56.718) and third (1:58.342).
In Hennessy’s six Paracanoe races, which saw the Ottawa River Canoe Club athlete compete against one other female or male or by herself, she posted three times under one minute (55.543 seconds, 57.531 seconds and 59.658 seconds) and three times over a minute (1:01.462, 1:01.532 and 1:02.207). The official results didn’t specify if she was racing in canoe or kayak events.
Rideau’s Gabriel Ferron-Bouius also had little competition as his 200-metre times were 43.961 seconds, 45.106 seconds and 45.567 seconds.
Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for over 52 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.