Oldenhof Wins Olympic Bronze in K4 500m

Western Australian kayaker Lisa Oldenhof and her K4 500m teammates have claimed a bronze medal in their final in Beijing.

Oldenhof, Hannah Davies, Chantal Meek and Lyndsie Fogarty produced a powerful finish to enter the medal positions and hold off a late challenge from the Polish crew. Germany won gold and Hungary claimed silver.

For Oldenhof it is a first Olympic medal in her second appearance after competing in Athens in 2004.

The Australian girls followed a similar race strategy to that of Ken Wallace who claimed bronze in the K1 1000m event in the race preceding. The girls went out conservatively before switching on a powerful serge at the halfway mark to move up several positions into third, a result they keep.

Oldenhof believes that a combination of a favourable draw and the benefit of being relative unknowns helped them in their bronze medal quest.

“We were fortunate that we ended up with a fairly outside lane,” said Oldenhof.

“We went in as the underdogs. We were only ever considered fourth to sixth.

“It worked in our favour to work on our own race. We have a race plan that we have been building on over the last six to eight weeks.

“We were able to execute that pretty perfectly without being influenced by what the other crews around us were doing.

“After our heat we looked at our performance and decided we had a little bit more room to kick home a little bit earlier than what we had. We were holding back a little in the first half to give ourselves a bit more in the end and we came home well.”