After almost two hours paddling in what is effectively a marathon on water, the three fastest boats were separated by a single second at the end of the Jameson Liffey Descent on Saturday.
Coming to the finish line the English racing kayak double (K2) of Christopher Bland and Joel Wilson powered through the middle in a three-boat battle leaving South Africans Bruce Wenke and Paddy Strickland in second and the locals from Salmon Leap Canoe Club, Malcolm Banks and David Francis, in third.
The winners clocked one hour 53 minutes and 25 seconds, with the other two crews both being given a time only a second slower. Like many of the huge group of competitors on the day Wilson and Bland parted from their craft at one stage - "it was my first swim in the Liffey, but it was great," joked Wilson.
Banks and Francis had come together only in the run-up to the race, hoping to take advantage of a perceived weakness in the K2 field due to the absence of Gary Mawer, a winner last year but recently called into the Irish team for Sydney. "It wasn't weak enough," said Francis. "But it was a great race."
Last year Banks took the individual racing kayak (K1) title, but this year saw an emphatic win for 22-year-old Offalyman Graham O'Regan. Afterwards the Edenderry man said that he only recently felt fully back to form after an horrendous accident in which he broke both bones in his forearm, but the London-based student certainly showed no signs of rustiness on the water. At the sluice weir near Lucan he took a different route to most and lithely dipped under a branch of a tree which seemed to bar the way.
Further back, at Temple Mills, another young competitor had also shown an impressive maturity. Neil Fleming is only 16 but as his K2 boat, in which he was teamed with Philip Jones, approached the potentially lethal weir, he repeatedly called for the boat to back up until he was sure of the right line, then they dinked over coolly. Fleming and Jones won the junior section easily - they were ninth fastest overall - despite the fact that Jones "passed through the wall" with over three miles to go, according to Fleming, and had to stop paddling.
The winner of the women's K1 took on the whole course on her own, of course: and despite falling in twice (as did her rival Eileen Murphy) Michelle Barry went on to be the fastest woman home by over two minutes. She was winning her ninth title in a row and was the 14th fastest individual kayaker overall.
