Western Australian Institute of Sport pairing Jesse Phillips and Stephen Bird took a giant step towards Olympic nomination when they won the Men’s K2 200m final at the Oceania Championships in Penrith on Sunday.
The pair won a tight final where the top four were separated by less than a second, to put themselves ahead in the race for nomination, and follow on from the success of their WAIS-AIS training partner Alana Nicholls, who secured her nomination earlier in the meet in the women’s K1 200m.
Speaking after the Oceania Championship title, Phillips said he didn’t focus on anything other than performing during the race.
“There’s really no time to talk [to each other] or look to the side. We’ve got our race plan, we execute our race plan and we get the result that we aimed for,” Phillips said.
“I think the thing we’re most chuffed about is the time we did,” he said.
“Both races were competitive times. In terms of conditions it was dead flat in the final, there was a side wind so we were very encouraged by that because it’s not only two wins that we need, it’s two wins in world class times.”
The paddlers finished in 32.82s, beating the runners-up, Gold Coast pair Matthew Urquhart and Joel Simpson, by 0.24s.
Olympic nomination is based on performances over two designated races, with the final one at the Australian Championships in two weeks.
“That margin we won by, there is quite a long margin in sprinting terms,” Bird said. “It looks close to the untrained eye but we take anything. Even 0.003 — we’d even take that.”
The paddlers paired up four year ago after Bird moved to Australia from his native South Africa. Since then the two have been developed a strong partnership.
“Our combination has formed particularly over the last 18 months where we’ve been taking note of our activities pre-race,” said Phillips. “A lot of our activities are about putting things into place, replicating any possible opportunities, pressures and environment that we have to face at a world level.
“Our strategy and our plan is what we try and make ourselves unbeatable and fortunately we’ve executed two solid performances here this weekend and we’ll work towards two weeks time when we come back [for the National Championship].”
While other paddlers have certain superstitious and lucky charms for when they race, the pair only had one superstition.
“We try and make our preparation our superstition. If we do that then we know that this is the outcome. We have to stick to our winning formula,” said Bird.
The Perth based paddlers are looking forward to continuing their solid form and hoping to finish on the podium come London.
“All the results so far this domestic season have been pointing towards some really great gains since the our World Championships campaign year,” Phillips said.
“We’re really happy with how things are going and the changes we’ve made and we look forward to being in medal contention come early August.”
-Canoeing Australia
