Jon in K2 with Ed Rutherford

Our commiserations to Royal’s Jon Boyton and his partner Ed Rutherford of Elmbridge Canoe Club after a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful bid to qualify their K2 for the 1,000m event at London.

The pair came sixth in the semi at the European Olympic Qualifying Regatta in Poznan, needing a third place or better to reach the final. Their time was some 3.5 seconds adrift of the Norwegians’ winning time.

On the bright side, both paddlers are young and talented and have many years in the sport ahead of them.

Writing on Twitter, Ed said: “Disappointed with our performance today, hoped for more but tough conditions and competitors got in the way. Ah well, always next time!”

Jon added: “We gave it our all.”

Results from Poznan can be found on the organiser’s website.

(Picture credit: GB Canoeing) 

Patrick Mahoney in action

Our congratulations to Britain’s paracanoeists competing in Poland!

Royal Canoe Club’s Patrick Mahoney has won a bronze medal in the men’s V1 LTA at the Paracanoe World Championships in Poznan. Pat’s third place followed a gold medal for both Jeanette Chippington in the women’s V1 LTA and Dan Hopwood in the men’s V1 A class.

Dan, a former paratrooper, was widely seen as favourite in the 200m outrigger class. A canoeist from Trentham Canoe Club in Staffordshire, his times so far this season have been the quickest anywhere in the world.

British paracanoe team manager Steve Harris, himself a former member of the Armed Forces, had expressed huge confidence in the team after running a series of talent identification days at military rehabilitation centres.

Dan started canoeing in 2005 and is coached by John Court, well known in slalom circles as one of the driving forces behind ten-times World Champion Richard Fox.

Court, who pushed hard for canoeing to gain Paralympic status, told the Staffordshire Sentinel that Dan’s potential had been obvious from the start. He added: “Dan was a star in a wheelchair just looking for an event to excel in. We had just got outrigger into the international calendar and it was clear this guy could go all the way.”

Norman Zahm

News that former German international kayaker Norman Zahm failed a drugs test last month has received little coverage in the UK.

Possibly because the paddler, a one-time crew-boat partner of the great German 1,000m specialist Max Hoff, has been out of the national team for some time and was not in line for Olympic selection this year.

There’s a suggestion that his offence was inadvertent rather than deliberate, with speculation in one press report that it was due to use of a supplement bought abroad that may have been contaminated with a banned substance.

If so, it’s a tragedy for Zahm as athletes are deemed  responsible for everything they take.

There’s been much discussion about doping and rights recently, specifically the human right of athletes who take illegal performance-enhancing drugs to practise their sport after they’ve served a limited ban of a couple of years. (Or even to coach it after they’ve retired – one doped canoeist from the early 1990s returned to the sport after his suspension, won more medals internationally and is now working as a senior coach to a new generation of international canoeists).

Top British kayakers have been vocal about life-time bans, arguing that they’re the only real deterrent to athletes who might otherwise be tempted to cheat.

In this respect, it’s worth putting in a word for  WADA, the much-criticised World Anti-Doping Agency. Like it or not,  the law is on WADA’s side – human rights legislation being what it is, any harsher stance than WADA’s limited year bans would simply be over-turned by the courts. Lifetime bans are not enforceable.

Countering this legal position are many who openly ask who is going to protect the human right of clean athletes to practise their sport, given that some of them will have been unfairly barged out of the way in selection races by doped athletes.

Olympic rowing champion Andy Triggs Hodge takes a slightly different tack. In a thoughtful blog post this week, he argues that cycling’s David Millar and sprinting’s Dwain Chambers are just victims, each a cog in the wheel of an organised doping system.

“The biggest factor dividing clean athletes and cheats are the people around them, those who guide them.  This is a group that is presumed good, it’s not regulated or monitored, they’re outside of contracts, and no public law, in the UK, control them,” he writes, adding: “Athletes will tear their world apart to achieve a dream, it’s a dark place and it relies on the people on the outside to ensure the athlete is driving in the right direction.  But when that support turns out to be bad, guiding them into a world of doping, removing the consequences, [it] becomes as simple as a pick-me-up coffee in the morning.”

The point’s been made repeatedly that athletes in some sports find that “everyone else is at it” and that if they don’t yield to the system they simply won’t cope with the intense demands being made on them. So it was with David Millar in cycling.

That is not a good enough argument for doping. However, you dress it up, it’s still cheating.

When young athletes realise this, perhaps then there’s a chance of making sure that they are never tempted, regardless of what they – or their entourage – might see as the benefit of improved personal performance.

Hodge says that rowing’s squad doctor Dr Ann Redgrave, wife of Olympic great Sir Steve,  was shocked to discover from young rowers that many had little idea about supplements and what senior rowers took. Many apparently thought all the top rowers took muscle-building supplements  - which they don’t.  Educating young athletes is therefore really important.

The BCU, whose website pages on anti-doping can be found here,  is to be commended for its stance, insisting that all young canoeists planning on going for any sort of selection undertake an online doping awareness course.

The course alone is not enough. We should not tire in our efforts to tackle the problem nor become complacent as to the possible short-cuts that athletes might take.

GB Rowing, like the BCU, is making huge  efforts to educate everyone involved with young athletes and getting senior athletes to tell those around them at club-level about these key messages. Everyone needs to be singing from the same song sheet, so it’s great to see top GB kayakers making their views plain in press interviews, via Twitter and on other social media channels.

Two-year bans suggest a wrist-slapping culture where an athlete is told he’s a “very naughty boy” and given a moderate penalty, during which time he or she can still continue training. A better education programme might result in an environment where it is deemed thoroughly unacceptable to cheat and athletes will find themselves pilloried by their peers to the extent that they don’t even consider a return to sport.

Hodge makes the point in his blog: “Millar lost my trust when he wanted to return to sport.”

A journalist recently asked the sprinter and former drugs cheat Dwain Chambers if he thought he’d be cheered by the crowds if he lined up for the 100m in the Olympic stadium this summer. “I think so,” was his response. Had he replied, “I doubt it,” and walked away from sport, one might get the sense that he understood the intense anger and revulsion his actions have caused among right-thinking athletes.

As it is, one senses that some might see a two-year ban as a price worth paying for using banned substances. Let’s hope not. And, meanwhile, let’s educate all our young canoeists to understand this is not the way they should ever consider going.

(Picture credit: Derwesten.de)

The course will run on 8,9 & 15,16 September. Club members should contact Stephen Crehan. Non-club members contact Karen Bagshaw at Canoe England.

The club is also planning to run a Foundation Safety and Rescue training (FSRT) on 23 June on which there are 3 places left. Details of what that course entails, can be found here.

Poznan Regatta 2012

There are several interesting blog posts on Kayak Is Life, Sportscene.tv and Sprintwise about this week’s events in Poznan, Poland.  The paracanoe races and the qualifying competition for the Olympic Games take place on Wednesday and Thursday before the main regatta itself kicks off.

British interest will be in the Men’s K2 1,000m (Royal’s Jon Boyton and Ed Rutherford), Men’s K1 1,000m (Andy Daniels), Women’s K2 (Lani Belcher/Angela Hannah), C1 200m (Richard Jefferies) and C1 1,000m (Matt Lawrence). Paracanoeing attention will be focused on Royal’s Patrick Mahoney.

The Brits will be among canoeists from 35 European countries hoping to make Poznan their springboard for the Games – only the winners of the final get a guaranteed place at London.

You can read more about our top international paddlers in the  Olympic Canoeing channel of the Royal CC website.

If you want news bulletins, entries lists and/or results, the organiser’s website is here at www.kayakpl.com

There is also live coverage on the ICF section of the Eurovision website

And you can follow Team GB’s progress here and on the Sporting Life website.

Our very best wishes to Royal Canoe Club’s Jon Boyton who’s in Poland this week to try to qualify his boat for the Olympic Games.

Jon, 23, is paddling with Ed Rutherford and this is his final chance to get their K2 picked by selectors for London.

The pair need to win to make it to London.

Last week they achieved a personal best time over 300m, so they’ve confident that their preparations have been as good as they can be.

“It is going to be like no other race. We either win or we’re not going to the Olympics,” Jon told The Kingston Guardian this week.

You can follow Jon on Twitter here.

Royal’s Tim Brabants, the reigning 1,000m singles Olympic champion, will also be racing for selection. Having beaten rival Paul Wycherley once already this year, he now has to pip Paul to the finish line in Poznan to be sure of the K1 1,000m slot at London. Otherwise it will all come down to a final race-off in Duisburg as selectors have decreed it must be a best-of-three to qualify.

(Picture credit: GB Canoeing and Jon Boyton via Twitter) 

Some of Britain’s top paddlers have gone to Poznan to try to qualify the last boats for London. Others are there for their first international outing of the year, keen to see where they are against foreign competition.

GB Canoeing’s produced this new video (see above) which brings canoe fans up-to-date with details of what’s going on in their sport. There’s something for everyone – the GB sprint team, Britain’s slalom paddlers, even Sir Steve Redgrave’s Devizes to Westminster outing.