South African Kayaker Hank McGregor Makes It Another World Champs Win

In a repeat of the 2016 result, South Africans Hank McGregor and Andrew Birkett gave the host nation a perfect one-two in the men’s K1 events at the ICF Canoe World Marathon Championships at Camps Drift on Saturday.

After the finish, an unusually emotional McGregor paid homage to both the home crowd and his support at home.

‘My dad once said to me I would realise what it is like to race in front of your son, and today I got that feeling. My dad (Lee) is watching me, he is somewhere in the middle of the hurricane in the US, so thanks to dad for everything you have done for me and thanks to my family, my son and wife.

‘So this one is for my boy (Thorsten) – I am so glad he was watching me today.

‘Big thanks to the crowd, especially the guys on the opposite side of the bank. You kept us going. It is such a privilege and an honour to race for my country and be able to win in front of my home crowd. This was something incredible.’

After close to 30 kilometres of racing, the wily McGregor worked himself into pole position at the front of a four-man group for the final 500m dash to the finish line, and then had the speed to keep his compatriot back on the wave as they battled it out on the final sprint for gold.

After two desperate attacks, and with less than 100 metres to go, Birkett realised he wasn’t going over McGregor’s bow wave and settled back to come home just over half a boat length back and barely ahead of the fast-finishing Hungarian Adrián Boros. Portugal’s José Ramalho faded over the final 150m to just miss out on a medal.

The four leaders broke away from a big group of 10 paddlers on the final turn before the first portage, and from there simply worked together to maintain a gap on the chasing bunch.

The quartet stayed together with a few half-hearted attempts at domination until the paddle up to the final turn, which saw a series of big attacks, but nobody could get a decisive break.

McGregor was able to position himself to come off the final turn at the front and then hold that until Birkett launched his final sprint from far out, but he could not get his nose over the wave and had to settle for second.

This is McGregor’s ninth World Championship gold medal, his seventh in a K1 and his fifth K1 win in five years to cement his position as at least the top marathon canoeist of his generation, and possibly of all time.

Andy Birkett was full of praise for the man he beat at the South African Champs recently.

‘Thank goodness we had four boats so we could get a little bit of rest sometimes, but congratulations to Hank, he was superb today and he deserved to win – I gave it my all.’

Source: Sascoc.co.za