Guy Dresser | Royal Canoe Club - GB Canoeing have called in consultants to advise them on how to make sprint canoeing – that’s high kneeling rather than kayaking – a bigger, better sport.

The review is after opinions from people with an interest or involvement in the sport to find out what it would take to develop a culture and infrastructure capable of producing athletes of Olympic medal-winning potential.

Before you say ‘lots of money and dedicated training camps’, you might want to have a look at the abject failure of the Lawn Tennis Association to produce a single true top-twenty (or arguably top anything) in men or women’s tennis since ploughing millions into an excellence programme. (Two years ago the LTA had its funding withheld by Sport England because it emerged fewer people were playing the sport and the association had not produced any evidence it knew how to attract more participants at the grass roots). 

Nevertheless, in canoeing, given the dearth of grass-roots canoe coaches surely money would pay for the development (or importation) of some Hungarian coaches to get this somewhat neglected side of the sport up to scratch. Frankly, if Britain had had £40,000 it might have been able to get David Cal’s coach to come to the UK – now that would have been interesting.

Wharton says it wants as many people as possible to have their say – there’s a questionnaire available to fill in online – if you want to complete it, go here.

The form will take around 20 minutes to fill in.

Of course…..all this assumes C2 will remain an Olympic sport – many people assume it’ll get the chop by 2020 to make way for women’s C1, a sport which has relatively few practitioners in the UK at the moment.

Also read (by Samantha Rippington): A Canoeists view on the status of Sprint Canoe in Great Britain

British canoe history

Britain has had mixed success in high-kneeling canoeing. Back in 1948 when canoeing was still a sit-down affair, Hugh Van Zwanenberg and Mike Symons finished in 7th place.

Some three decades later,  Willie Reichenstein made it to the Olympic semi-finals in Moscow. Eric Jamieson went one better, managing an incredible Olympic canoe sprint final at Los Angeles – and having won medals in slalom C2, a gold and bronze in 1981 and 1983, respectively. Richmond’s Marcus Gohar blazed a trail for some time in the 1980s, picking up medals at Grand Prix marathons and racing at the inaugural marathon World Championships in 1988.

No history of canoe sport would be complete without a mention of the Train brothers, Andy and Steve. Multiple medals at sprint and marathon World Championships and five Olympic Games marked an incredible tally.

More recently, Britain’s been represented by Richard Jefferies – he took part in the C1 200m at London and also the 1,000m.