New Zealand canoeing team performs poorly, gets only sympathetic cheers at Olympics

Chaos set in almost immediately.

During the first heat of the men’s C2 500m event in Vail-sur-Marne, Paris, an international journalist asked: “Why didn’t the New Zealand team start when the gun went off?”

New Zealand duo Max Brown and Grant Clancy seemed to struggle even at the start as their opponents charged out of the line with brutal force.

That was the last time the pair appeared on television. In hilarious scenes, they finished more than 46 seconds, or about 200 meters, behind the winner of the 500m race.

Not only did the New Zealand team lag behind in the men’s events, but in the women’s C2 500m they finished more than 10 seconds behind the bottom in 2:22.09.

They returned for the quarter-finals but fell behind again. By then, the huge crowd on the first day of the canoe sprints had backed the New Zealand pair, clapping and cheering generously in scenes reminiscent of “Eric the Eel” – the Equatorial Guinean swimmer whose Sydney Olympics 100m freestyle time remains the slowest in history.

But these athletes are not from developing countries and therefore cannot compete on the biggest stage. Canoe Racing New Zealand (CRNZ) receives high performance funding of more than $2.5 million per year.

The money is being used to build a strong flatwater kayak program. The competition Brown and Clancy competed in on Tuesday was very different.

In a kayak, the paddler sits and uses a two-bladed paddle, alternating the blades to paddle through the water to move forward. In a canoe, the paddler kneels and uses a single-bladed paddle to propel the boat forward.

The sport does not exist in New Zealand and is rarely seen at club level competitions around the country.

Means to an End

Why New Zealand is competing in an event where it has no hope of being competitive is down to a quirk in the international body’s Olympic qualification rules.

At the start of the Olympic cycle, Canoeing New Zealand (CRNZ) identified men’s K4 kayaking as a priority sport for the Games.

The only problem was that the New Zealand team failed to qualify directly for the four-man boat race in Paris at last year’s world championships.

CRNZ had hoped to secure two K2 Olympic quotas at the Oceania Championships in Sydney – which would have allowed it to select four athletes – but secured just one through Kurtis Imrie and Max Brown.

Therefore, the National Sports Administration has chosen Plan C, or C2. In the Oceania events, as long as there are at least three boats participating in the competition, there will be two more places available for canoeing.

The New Zealand team narrowly won against a team made up of a Samoan duo and a hastily assembled local Australian crew consisting of a man in his 70s and a man in his 60s.

CRNZ then used these 4 quotas to form the K4 team.

In short, the ship is just a means to an end.

But some in the Wells-sur-Marne canoe racing community and the media have questioned the morality of CRNZ’s qualification strategy.

The strategy of manipulating the quota system to give priority to boats that failed to qualify through the regular route was also referred to the sporting tribunal after CRNZ refused the K1 1000m quota won by Quaid Thompson.

Thompson appealed CRNZ’s decision, but the appeal was dismissed by the court in April.

Brown admitted CRNZ’s approach was “a little different”, but he believed the team’s performance in the K4 race on Tuesday, which saw them secure a place in the semi-finals, proved New Zealand deserved to have a big boat at the Olympics.

“We used the ingenuity of the New Zealanders to qualify for K4 which we came very close to at the world championships and we’ve been able to get there every time,” said Brown, who competed in all four of Tuesday’s races.

“Ultimately, no rules were broken. We followed the process throughout.”

“I think we proved in the K4 quarter-final that New Zealand deserves to be in K4 here. So it always comes back to that – I’m playing C2 to give us a chance to get to K4.”

A completely different sport

Clancy and Brown had just three months to learn the difficult game before competing on the sport’s grand stage in front of a global television audience, and they were delighted to have completed it twice without incident.

Clancy, who was at the helm from the back of the boat, described canoeing as a “completely different sport” than kayaking.

“We found the biggest challenge in switching from a kayak to a canoe is that there is no rudder, so the hardest part is actually steering. Everything is done with the paddle, whereas a kayak doesn’t require those skills because you can only steer with the rudder… so that was our biggest challenge, staying on course.”

It’s also bad for the body, Brown said.

“After my last race, when I got off the boat, I couldn’t feel my right leg, I fell and it was numb. That’s the hardest part, the kayaking action is so one-sided and the kayak is very symmetrical. So it’s been very hard on my legs and my poor hip – I’ve been working hard in the gym to get it strong enough.”

Brown has four matches on the opening day of the tournament on Tuesday, including two each in C2 and K4, which is a heavy workload. Brown said he hopes to have some rest on Wednesday before playing in the semifinals in K4.

Brown and Clancy will also compete in the C2 500m in Thursday’s Group B final.