Australia continues to shuffle K4 gold medal boat

Australia will continue to shuffle the crew in its Olympic gold medal boat, the men’s K4 1000, this weekend as it works to find the team to defend their title in Rio.

CANOE/KAYAK: Australia will continue to shuffle the crew in its Olympic gold medal boat, the men’s K4 1000, this weekend as it works to find the team to defend their title in Rio.

After winning gold at the opening World Cup event in Portugal last weekend, Riley Fitzsimmons will replace Jordan Wood at World Cup number two in Duisburg, Germany.

Australian Canoeing has been forced to make changes to the crew that won gold in London, after Tate Smith failed a drugs test last year.

Veteran Ken Wallace joined London crew members David Smith, Murray Stewart and Jacob Clear at the Australian titles, which they duly won.

And then last weekend, with Jordan Wood slipping into the hot seat, the crew beat a strong international field.

Australian Canoeing National Performance Director, Richard Fox, said his mind is still wide open on the team he’ll take to this year’s World Championships.

“We are using the World Cups to shape up our final formation for worlds, and I think the team will feel they are off to a good start,” Fox said after Portugal.

Murray Stewart, who also won silver in the individual K1 1000 in Portugal, knows the challenges ahead.

“We’ve had a fairly disrupted year or so in the K4,” he said.

“Obviously it was a massive loss to us to lose Tate from the crew, and there’s been quite a struggle dealing with that.

“A lot can be taken out of the relationship between Dave, Jake and myself, we’ve worked off each other for so many years. But it’s full testament to the young guys that they’ve got that ability to step up when it counts.”

The crew, which included Tate Smith, failed to make the final at last year’s World Championships.

But Stewart says it would be foolish for anyone to write off their chances of defending their gold medal next year.

“To us, 2014 was an anomaly,” he said.

“We were paddling much better than our results showed, other than one negative result we were paddling well.

“At our last event before worlds we won a world cup race, so we must have been doing something right.”

ROSS SOLLY FOR AUSTRALIAN CANOEING