Capetonians Graeme Solomon and Dawid Mocke triumphed over a desperately low river to win the Men’s Health/New Balance Breede River canoe marathon on Sunday.
Solomon and Mocke, who won the ski World Cup doubles title earlier this year, finished the tough river marathon out of sight of runners-up Shaun Rubenstein and Michael Mbanjwa, at the end of two stages that were both dramatically shortened because the Breede River was unpaddleable in many places.
The race organisers scrapped the first stage entirely and ran the first leg from the normal start of the second leg to a temporary finish above the Swellendam weir, lopping 7km of that traditional stage.
The second day was shortened even further and started at Oosthuisen’s farm, below the Waterfall rapid, to the same finish above Swellendam weir.
Solomon and Mocke were content to bide their time on the first day and were right at the back of the front bunch at the first portage, a few hundred metres from the start.
”We must have jumped out of the boat 50 or 60 times on the first day, and that kills you. So we planned to go easy and pace ourselves until the right moment,” said Solomon.
With KwaZulu-Natal stars Hank McGregor and Len Jenkins and the Ekhuruleni crew of Shaun Rubenstein and Michael Mbanjwa continually testing the pace at the front, Solomon and Mocke were able to get away after two hours of racing with just Rubenstein and Mbanjwa on their tail.
”We managed to get into the water quickly at one particular portage, about 45 minutes from the end of the first day, and I said to Dawid, ‘This is it. Go’, and we got away and just gunned it to the finish, where we had a two-and-a-half minute lead,” said Solomon.
”It was tough. Even though I am a heavier paddler and took real strain in the low Berg, in a double your weight is distributed better, and we were able to get going. In conditions like this fitness counts for a lot and Dawid is one of the fittest guys around,” he added.
Mocke hit the headlines four years ago when he won the Breede with Peter Cole, announcing his arrival on the national marathon stage. Since then he has been a consistent performer in river marathon as well as ski racing, and won the New Zealand King of the Harbour ski title earlier this year before taking the Ski World Cup S2 title with Solomon.
”We knew it was going to be low, but nobody thought it would be this low,” said Solomon. ”We raced on this river a few weeks ago when it was low, but it was nothing like this. I hear that the local farmers have been pumping from the river furiously because water restrictions kick in on Monday.”
”Hats off to all the top crew, and the rest of the field, for doing the race, knowing full well that it was going to be very, very low,” Solomon said.
The new crew of McGregor and Jenkins finished third overall, more that five minutes behind the leaders, with Stellenbosch siblings Chris and Gert van Deventer just behind them.
Graham Bird and Russell Lund surprised the field by finishing fifth, despite the fact that they had never paddled together until the week before the race.
The women’s race was overwhelmed by the country’s form crew of Alexa Lombard and Donia Kamstra. They finished sixth in the world marathon champs a month ago, and added the Breede title to the Dusi and South African Marathon champs scalps from earlier in the year.
The pair cruised to victory almost 15 minutes clear of runners-up Abbey Miedema and Michelle Eray, with the experienced crew of Nikki Mocke, wife of the men’s champion Dawid, and Kim Rew battling in the shallow river, and finishing a very distant third.
Local stars Dane Sanvido and Lance King shone in the tough conditions and not only took the junior honours, but also muscled their way into 12th position overall.
The low conditions caused plenty of drama on the water, with the majority of the field experiencing problems with damaged craft, dislodged seat-pins and holes from the regular pounding from the rocks in the shallow river. — Sapa