The long road towards selection for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games for Australia’s sprint canoe athletes takes a formative step this weekend with the Grand Prix 1 in Adelaide.
The first event of the 2015/16 domestic season, whilst not a Rio selection event, will go a long way towards determining team boat combinations ahead of selections, which will then vie for the qualified Olympic boats set to make up Australia’s sprint canoe team for next year’s Games.
Held at Adelaide’s West Lakes complex across December 4-6, all of Australia’s leading names are set to compete, including WAIS 2012 Olympians Alana Nicholls, Jesse Phillips and Stephen Bird.
Competition will begin with the women’s K2 500m event, which is set to be hotly contested, particularly as Australia’s berth for Rio in this event is yet to be cemented.
WAIS duo Nicholls and Jaime Roberts will line up in heat two, and are expected to qualify through to the final, which will likely pit the pair against the tried and tested combinations of Jo Brigden-Jones and Naomi Flood and U23 World Championship medallists Alyce Burnett and Alyssa Bull.
The same core group are also expected to feature prominently in the individual K1 500m which will also be hosted on Friday.
In the men’s 1000m events, Gold Coast based WAIS scholarship holder Daniel Bowker will look to cause an upset in the men’s K4 1000m, when he teams up with Ken Wallace, Lachlan Tame and Jy Duffy, as they go head to head with the 2015 World Championship representative crew of; David Smith, Jacob Clear, Riley Fitzsimmons and Jordan Wood.
There will be a strong Western Australian flavour carried into the men’s K1 200m event, with Bird and Phillips set to be rivalled by WAIS training partner Brodie Holmes, whilst Tame, Callum Dunn and Ben McLean will also threaten.
Later in the GP1 schedule, Bird and Phillips will look to reassert their position as Australia’s quickest K2 200m combination after the duo lost their national crown to Wallace and Tame at the national championships held last summer.
