Tag Archives: Olympic Games

Surf – the story behind Australia’s 1,000m kayaking success

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Australia has won eight Olympic medals in 1,000m kayak racing. It owes much of that success to another sport altogether – surf life saving.

surfskiBased on the training regime developed by beach lifeguard services across the country, surf ski racing has become an established pathway for paddlers to progress to kayak racing on the Olympic stage.

Sprint kayaking isn’t the only Olympic sport to have benefited from the size and strength of surf lifesaving – at the London Games in 2012 more than 60 Australian athletes in the country’s swimming, water polo, rowing and kayaking teams declared a background in competitive surf lifesaving. Continue reading →

Australians plot quest for kayak gold

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Australia's Mens K4 is aiming for a podium place at the Rio Olympic GamesAustralia’s top sprint kayakers have arrived in Germany for the World Cup in Duisburg. It’s the first major International Canoe Federation (ICF) World Cup competition of the year and marks the beginning of teams’ final preparations for the Olympic Games in Rio in August.

Two more World Cup events will follow, the next on 27-29 May in Racice, the Czech Republic, and the final event in Montemor-o-Velho in Portugal on 3-5 June. Continue reading →

Olympic fears over Rio continue

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ioc-docIs Rio going to be a success? Olympic insiders say it’s not guaranteed. 

Despite hopes the organisers of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games are going to get their act together and many smiles and handshakes at the official Session of the International Olympic Committee in Sochi today, concerns are still mounting. Continue reading →

ICF to drop men’s K2 200m from Olympics

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k2-200mThe International Canoe Federation has voted to drop mens K2 (kayak pairs) 200m sprint racing from the Olympic programme to make way for a new women’s canoe event.

Amid what insiders describe as ‘chaotic scenes’, the shock vote at an ICF Board Meeting in Peru in November followed a long and heated debate over how to admit the women’s canoe singles 200m discipline into the Olympic programme. The vote followed a long push by campaigners to achieve greater gender equity in the sport. Continue reading →

Post-Olympic blues for elite job seekers

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There is growing evidence that some of the sports stars we were cheering on during the Olympic Games in London last year are in another race – for a job.

According to various media reports, many athletes have stopped competing and are now finding out that austerity Britain isn’t necessarily the best place to be looking for work.

Some say ’dozens’ of the 553 athletes who represented Team GB in London are job-hunting. At least 64 have quit their sports for a variety of reasons, while a further 24 are undecided about their futures, according to research published by the BBC. Continue reading →