CANOE/KAYAK: Australia has had a successful ICF sprint World Championships in Milan, claiming seven Rio 2016 Olympic quota spots with fantastic performances in the Olympic events.
Lachlan Tame and Ken Wallace claimed silver in the K2 1000m men's final, the men's K4 team finished fourth, while Murray Stewart also secured Australia a Rio spot with 6th in the K1 1000m.
In the women's K4 Australia finished 11th, Steve Bird concluded his World Championships in style by winning the K1 200 C final, while Sunshine Coast kayaker Alyce Burnett finished seventh in the women’s K1 200 C final.
Final day wrap:
Kenny Wallace has won his third K1 5000 gold medal in as many years on the final day of the ICF sprint World Championships in Milan.
It was his fourth triumph in the past five years and continued his recent domination of the gruelling men’s event, now having won 11 straight international races.
Heading into the final Wallace resumed his rivalry with German Max Hoff.
The pair led the charge alongside Aleh Yurenia of Belarus and Danish K1 1000 champion Rene Holten Poulsen for most of the race.
Wallace attacked in the latter stages to win in 19:54.46, 3.11 seconds ahead of Hoff with Yurenia taking the bronze.
“It’s always going to be tough with Max. He’s an endurance animal that just keeps going and going,” Wallace said.
“One day he is really going to hang on and just go for it. That was quite a tough 5k race. At one stage there were five of us and you can’t really drop the pace down when there are so many of us in the one circle and with Rene there and Aleh.
They are both really strong paddlers. So I was kind of holding off and waiting to see if he would go and I held off until the 190 to go.”
“In previous times it’s been 300 metres or so but it changes. So that’s a big day, doing the 500. Going from K2, having a guy that’s sitting behind me and pushes me along when I get tired I didn’t have him this time so it was pretty tough.”
In other results, Marius Florian recorded a time of 23:03.32 to finish 21st in the men’s C1 5000 final.
Wallace and Tame win K2 500 gold
Kenny Wallace and Lachlan Tame won Australia’s fourth gold medal of the ICF sprint World Championships on the final day of racing in Milan.
Yesterday’s K2 1000 silver medalist’s got off to a strong start in the final. A blanket crossed the front-end of the field at the half way mark before the Australian pair increased their stroke rate to power to victory in 1:29.216.
They finished 0.788 seconds ahead of Spain in second.
“It is always good to get another gold medal at a World Championships,” Wallace said.
“To be able to call yourself a world champion again this year is great, particularly before an Olympic year.”
Tame was happy with how the race unfolded.
“It went to plan, we hoped to do well and we executed what we could do to our best, we got a second yesterday and a first today so we are stoked,” Tame said.
The men’s K4 1000 A final followed.
The newly formed crew of David Smith, Riley Fitzsimmons, Jacob Clear and Jordan Wood narrowly missed out on a medal to the Czech Republic by 0.054 seconds.
It was an encouraging performance by the Australian quad, improving on tenth place last year and with Wood and Fitzsimmons aged just 21 and 19 respectively, the scope for improvement is great.
The K4 500 women bounced back from a disappointing semifinal on Saturday to finish second in the B final.
The boat featuring Jo Brigden-Jones, Alana Nicholls, Naomi Flood and Bernadette Wallace finished 0.085 seconds behind Denmark who won in 1:37.518.
In other results, Western Australian Steve Bird concluded his World Championships in style by winning the K1 200 C final, while Sunshine Coast kayaker Alyce Burnett finished seventh in the women’s K1 200 C final.
CANOEING AUSTRALIA
