IRELAND'S leading paddler over 26 miles, Gary Mawer, races the single kayak for a medal placing at the World Marathon Championships in Vaxholm, Sweden, this weekend.
The 26-year-old starts as one of the race favourites having become a permanent fixture among the top five marathon world rankings in recent years. Mawer finished fourth at the last championships two years ago, and his 1995 form in the Grand Prix series has kept him in the frame.
Four years of intensive training in Richmond, England, under former British international Brian Greenway, has seen Mawer move up in an event which requires as much sprint speed as it does endurance stamina. In Atlanta, Mawer raced the K2 509m and 1,000m Olympic sprint events with Conor Maloney as far as the repechages.
Irish team manager Michael Feeney believes that the extra sprinting speed could be decisive at the finish, with the race likely to hinge on the last of three portages just 2,500m from the end.
With the strongest competition likely to come from Britain, Hungary, Romania and the Australians, Feeney is confident of Mawers chances: "He is a better marathon paddler than sprinter and he has always been in the top four or five in the world. At the team selection race in July he literally took off from the crowd with five miles to go and finished in two hours, the course record is 1:59."
Mawer also won K2 selection with his younger brother, John, but faced with the prospect of racing two marathons in one weekend he makes way for Simon Van Lonkhuyzen. Ireland has never produced a world class K2 before, and while John Mawer won the junior title in Amsterdam, the untried combination will be tested by the distance.
Also racing this weekend are Ireland's Slalom canoeists in the latest World Cup leg in Prague. Ian Wiley, fifth in the Olympics, is well placed for a high overall K1 position in the series, after winning in Spain and finishing fourth in the United States last April.
Canadian canoeist Mike Corcoran, who was placed 10th in his Olympic race, will not join Stephen O'Flaherty and Stephen Hutton in the C1s in Prague because of study commitments.
