DROUGHT-LIKE conditions so far this year have left canoeists up the proverbial creek without a great deal to paddle in, tomorrow's Kilcullen marathon being the latest casualty of a water shortage that threatens to force severe restrictions on the remaining competition calendar.
Rainfall figures for the period have dipped to two thirds of the usual average, and according to the ESB, water levels behind their 5,500-acre Golden Falls dam in Kildare are currently a dramatic 80 centimetres below target. With canoeing on the Liffey severely disrupted by the shortage, Saturday's ranking race for the Jameson Descent in September has been switched from Kilcullen, three miles downstream of the dam, to the Barrow.
The crisis had already claimed last weekend's Irish Open Slalom Championships in Castletown, and the Canoe Union's Michael Scanlon yesterday conceded that other events may have to be scratched from the programme if the drought does not end soon.
Describing the flow as being the lamest the sport has ever experienced, Scanlon repeated ESB assurances that the Jameson Liffey Descent would go ahead regardless of its 165 million-gallon demand on water supplies.
Normally you would have white-water paddling in the winter but this year the season was very short and it looks as though it's going to be a similar story for the rest of the summer.
"Unless there's a long downpour, what may happen is the Upper and Lower Liffey ranking races will be cancelled. We can't really postpone the Descent itself because a lot of the organising has already been done, but it may mean that the portages are longer than normal," he said.
The situation has been exacerbated by construction work on the new Leixlip bridge which has turned the local reservoir into one expansive mudflat. The two-centimetre drop in the water level hasn't helped Salmon Leap's contingent of international paddlers whose preparations for the World series regatta in Mechelen, Belgium, last weekend were badly disrupted by the lack of practice water.
According to the manager of the national sprint team, Kevin Murphy, the conditions are "hardly ideal" with a world championship season just underway.
Murphy can at least claim victory from adversity following Peter Egan and Brendan Maloney's Mechelen win in the two-man kayak. The two medal-rated juniors narrowly missed out on a double when they looked across at the end of the 500 metre sprint and paid for their inexperience on the line.
Ireland's senior K2, paddled by the Mawer brothers, finished 12th overall in the 500 metres and were denied a place in the 200 metre final by one 300th of a second in a race which ended with six boats crossing the line within a second of each other.
The decision was made not to race the four-man kayak in Belgium and with the next regatta in the series being held in Nottingham before the end of the month, the sprint committee are likely to keep their focus on the two K2 campaigns.
