DURBAN – The Euro Steel Team taking part in the ICF Canoe Ocean Racing World Championships next week has a fascinating mix of South Africa’s young rising stars, backed up by some of the most experienced and biggest names in world paddling.
The old superstars who will be on the starting line in Durban on October 17-19 include the world’s most successful men’s marathon kayak racer, 47-year-old Hank McGregor – whose bulging trophy cabinet includes no less than 11 Marathon World Championship gold medals, and 37-year-old Andy Birkett, whose collection of eight Marathon World Championship medals includes three gold.
An interesting sidebar is that the two most experienced women in the squad are SA team paddlers Pippa McGregor and Nix Birkett, and they will be paddling with their illustrious husbands in the mixed doubles race. This sets up the fascinating prospect of a potential battle between two potent husband-and-wife combinations for that world title.
However, for a McGregor or Birkett pairing to claim the win next weekend, they will have to beat defending champions Uli Hart and Georgia Singe – a pair of paddlers in the Euro Steel squad who are at the other end of the scale when it comes to experience, but have already collected an impressive haul of medals and titles.
Last year in Portugal, when the Hart and Singe combination claimed the title, Hart was still racing under 23, while Singe was U18. For both it was their first “senior” World Championship victory.
Hart already had three Ocean Racing world titles to his name from U23 and junior categories, while Singe has multiple medals from the Ocean Racing and Marathon World Championships and had won the junior championship race the day before her mixed doubles heroics.
Matt Fenn is another young team member who is building a big future on a foundation of some strong results. After claiming the 2023 and 2024 World Championships titles in the U23 age category, the younger Fenn will join his brother Josh and Hart in the senior races and alongside McGregor, Birkett and others will form a powerful squad of South African paddlers looking for home victories.
Hart and Fenn’s move up to the senior ranks means Matthew Coetzer has a great chance of adding an U23 medal to the junior medal he won in 2022.
South African women’s surfski paddling is probably the strongest of any country in the world at the moment and among the young rising stars making an impact are 22-year-old Jade Wilson and 21-year-old Saskia Hockly.
Both will be looking for an U23 win to add to their championship medal counts. Wilson, a medalist at the U23 marathon championships this year, won the u23 surfski title in 2021, while Hockly has six surfski medals – including two golds for winning the junior category – as well as a string of flat-water marathon medals.
The ICF Canoe Ocean Racing World Championships take place in Durban from October 17-19, with the singles (SS1) race taking place on the day with the best predicted downwind conditions, and the SS2 mixed doubles taking place on one of the other days within the three-day competition window.
Euro-Steel is also one of the major sponsors of the event.