Canoe Slalom NZ Junior & U23 Teams

Silver success for Kiwi junior paddlers

Tauranga paddlers Luke Robinson and Dan Munro have won New Zealand's first-ever junior world championship medal in canoe slalom, picking up silver in today's C2 final in Penrith.

Robinson, 16, and 17-year-old Munro qualified sixth-fastest for the final but unleashed a faultless performance when it counted, finishing in 130.56secs.

They were 7.66secs behind top-qualifers Michael Matejka and Jan Vetrovsky (Czech Republic), with Poland's Adam Kozub and Jakub Brzezinski third in 135.06secs, after collecting four 2sec penalties.  Australians Steven Lowther and Brodie Crawford missed two gates after qualifying second, eventually ending in eighth.

Fellow Tauranga paddler Callum Gilbert also qualified for a final, finishing eighth in the K1 decider.

Gilbert qualified third-fastest and only picked up a single 2sec penalty but a small error on the tricky move at main wave saw his podium chances slip away.  Austrian Mario Leitner edging Slovakian Vid Kuder Marusic for the gold medal.

In the junior women K1 the NZ girls had some problems on the difficult semis course, as did many others. Showing plenty of tenacity Kaydi finished 23rd and Kensa 24th.

Later in the day the K1 boys team of Theo, Callum and Alex put down a pretty solid performance to finish 6th ahead of some strong paddling nations.