Canoe Sprint gold at the U23 World Championships

Australia lived up to its pre-event favouritism with a stunning win for its men’s U23 K4 crew on Sunday at the 2019 ICF junior and U23 canoe sprint world championships in Pitesti, Romania, adding another gold to Australia’s overall medal tally of two gold medals and one silver medal.

Riley Fitzsimmons (NSWIS), Tom Green, Jackson Collins and Jean van der Westhuyzen paddled almost the perfect race to take the 500 metre gold, and will head to the senior canoe sprint world championships in Szeged, Hungary in two weeks’ time full of confidence.

“It was a very special day,” Fitzsimmons said.

“It was just one of those races where everything came together on the day. It was a great last 200 and we managed to hold on.”

It was the perfect finish to the last U23 World Championships for the 23-year old Rio Olympian.

“I’ve had some great memories from u23s and juniors and to cap it off like this is really special.”

With just under one year to go to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the junior and U23 canoe sprint world championships were a welcome opportunity for Australia’s youngest Olympic aspirants to get some racing under their belt and build confidence ahead of the ICF canoe sprint world championship and Olympic qualification in Szeged, Hungary in a couple of weeks (21-25 August 2019) with all four paddlers part of the senior team as well.

“That was the main goal coming into this regatta, to get the race experience and build the confidence coming into these last couple of weeks to Szeged,” Fitzsimmons said.

“It’s going to be a big regatta for us. We’re going for maximum (Tokyo 2020) quota spots and we’ve just been chasing that the whole time and hopefully we can pull it off.”

 

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Last ever under 23 race today, big final with the boys shake and bake!

A post shared by Riley Fitzsimmons (@rileyfitzz) on Aug 3, 2019 at 10:09pm PDT

Photo credit: Brača-sport