Mawer recovers to retain title

RAGING torrents of flood water were conspicuously absent on Saturday when more than a thousand paddlers navigated the Jameson Liffey Descent, with Gary Mawer recovering from a disastrous start to retain his K1 title.

The 26-year-old marathon kayaker capsized in the first thousand metres of his race, caught up in what he had earlier termed "the carnage of Straffan Weir". Unsighted, Mawer's line brought him down on top of another canoe and, as he fell out. his head was badly gashed by the following kayak.

The swim left Mawer with a buckled rudder and a three or four minute margin to close on race leader, Fergus Cooper, from Celbridge Paddlers. A previous winner of the Descent, Cooper is a consistent paddler down the weirs but by the middle stage portage at Leixlip dam his lead had been halved.

The floodwater had been passed out before Celbridge and unable to catch a wash from the Ks Cooper was losing time in the slower flow. Mawer's long distance pace, which two weeks ago had earned him silver at the World Marathon championships in Sweden, proved the difference on an unraging surface water levels at Leixlip lake soon dropped by several feet leaving mudflats for the paddlers that followed.

"I noticed it was, quite low at the Castletown rapids and in section further down, the river wad definitely slower than it has been in previous years," said Mawer. Even so, he came close to a second capsize in shallow water at Lucan. Earlier, Greg Slater and Simon Dark had seen their leading K2 break up when they shot the weir too straight and landed nose first without backup water to cushion the impact.

"I was a bit edgy. I just came down sideways, caught my edge on the stopper and it needed a quick draw stroke to pull me out of it. After Lucan I was just pushing against weeds all the time and I wasn't getting any run on the boat," Mawer said afterwards.

However, Cooper's lead shrunk with every stroke once Mawer passed the Wren's Nest weir and at Chapelizod, a mile and a half short of the finish line, the Salmon Leapkayaker passed Cooper by to take his second K1 Descent win in a time of 2:04:05.

Mawer's brother, John, finished fifth in a tactical senior K2 race which ended with a head-to-head sprint to the line. A competitive battle saw a leading group of six boats stay together as far as the Leixlip portage, and Ian and Alan Tordoff, the World and European champions from Chester, were left to take up the pace after Slater and Dark's accident in Lucan.

Behind them, the Nottingham junior pair of Damian Chapman and James Butler, who claimed second place at the recent British Nationals, chased all the way and at the finish line were within two seconds of denying the Tordoff brothers their sixth Descent title.

Michelle Barry continued her return to form after an illness enforced absence by winning the women's senior K1 event with almost two minutes to spare. Barry, from the Salmon Leap club, finished in 2:23:57 to take a record seventh title in spite of suffering from the flu.