Australian canoeing keen to retain star paddler Murray Stewart for Tokyo 2020

Head coach of the Australian canoe sprint team Jimmy Owens is keen to retain the Aussie stars of the sport over the next four years, including NSWIS paddlers Murray Stewart and Riley Fitzimmons.

A gold medallist in the K4 1000-metre at the London Olympics, Stewart had a stilted preparation for Rio. He suffered a debilitating illness that left him bed-bound and eventually led to his omission from the K4 team, ending his hopes of a title defence in Rio.

Given Stewart’s health struggles Owens made the decision to keep Stewart in just one boat in Rio, hoping that a sole focus on the K1 1000-metre would yield a strong result for the Olympic champion.

“We were always keen to have Murray in the boat, but obviously with the timing of him falling ill, it just wasn’t a two or three-week window that he was sick for, it was a whole process around that,” Owens told Canoeing Australia.

“He was getting sick leading in, he couldn’t train until he got back to full health, and a lot had happened during that critical window where we had some fantastic results.

“But also by not spreading him across two boats, it gave him a really good opportunity to really nail that K1, and his result and that race was near perfect. Getting that fourth place was bloody awesome.”

Despite Rio still being a recent memory, Owens has switched his focus to the 2020 Tokyo Games and said he was keen to secure Stewart alongside fellow gold medallists Ken Wallace and Jake Clear in his plans for the next four years.

“It’s massively important [to retain them as athletes],” he said.

“To keep Kenny, Murray and Jake in the sport for another four more years would be absolutely fantastic for the sport. And now we have new Olympians in there, and they are more hungrier than ever.

“And then you’ve got the guys on the fringe who have been so close, they are going to come back and be banging on the door in four years’ time because they know how close they were in 2016 but they didn’t quite get there.”

Included in the future plans for Owens is fellow NSWIS paddler Riley Fitzsimmons, who may well have been among those athletes who didn’t quite make the cut in 2016, but for Stewart’s untimely illness.

After winning gold in the K2 1000-metre alongside Jordan Wood at the 2015 U23 World Championships, the duo had been pencilled in to excel come Tokyo 2020. However the up-and-comers made an earlier than expected appearance in the K4 boat in Europe during Stewarts absence, with Owens noting that the next step for the pair was obvious.

“I was really impressed with what they delivered through 2015, and then to look at the results we built on through the 2016 World Cups,” Owens said.

“We saw that these guys were really stepping up and I’m really proud of where they put themselves to give themselves every chance of making that team.

“They were fully aware there were bigger boys swimming around, wanting to be part of that K4. But they gave everything to the program at every opportunity they were given.

“It really put pressure on the rest of the team to step up.”

While Rio wasn’t the gold medal-winning affair Owens had hoped for, he believes that the sport is in a position of growth over the next four years thanks to positive synergies between athletes, state institutions and the canoeing program.

“The only thing we need to do now for the next four years is making a stronger pipeline, with more people involved. We’ve grown the athlete pool, we’ve grown the State institutes, we’ve grown the system at Australian Canoeing, there is so much that’s grown there that is going to play a big part in our journey rolling forward that we need to make sure that we have the personnel around to help grow that,” he said.

Competition will resume for Australia’s elite sprint canoe athletes at the first post-Olympics grand prix on the first weekend in December.