Morrissey finally does it

CANOEING/ Liffey Descent: Jim Morrissey threw aside most of his wet gear and stood, stripped to the waist, in the blazing Saturday afternoon sunshine as the crowd milled around him on the river bank at Islandbridge.

Over 20 years after he had first taken part in the Liffey Descent he had just covered the 17½ miles from Straffan faster than any other senior racing (K1) kayaker.

"The Liffey is a race apart, a pilgrimage every year," he said. "Canoeists who are doing well all year don't always win it. It's not about tactics like flatwater racing sometimes is. It's a very elemental struggle, just the river, yourself and other paddlers."

The Raheny man, who now lives in Galway, had learned his canoeing with Dollymount Sea Scouts and felt it was fitting a member of the Sea Scouts should win on the last weekend of operation for the den in Dollymount before it is demolished and replaced by a modern structure.

Morrissey's maiden win might not have happened. "I'm actually ill. Spent two days this week in bed with a cold. I decided I'd get in (the boat) and float down. But the racing instinct of 20 years of paddling kicks in, and your heart overrides your head, I suppose."

Fergus Cooper, second, and Malcolm Banks, third, were not far behind 36-year-old Morrisey, who covered the course in two hours and 53 seconds.

Gary Mawer (35), who won the K1 class last year, teamed up with Ant Stott, a South African, to win the K2 class ahead of Neil Fleming and Dutchman Robin Koenders, with British crew James Block and Tim Brabants third.

In an excellent participation event - 954 paddlers took part in superb conditions - Brabants provided a link to a much more high-profile event. The Nottingham-based athlete was a bronze medallist in the K1000 class at the Sydney Olympics and was just back from the Athens Games, where he set a world record in the heats but just missed out on another medal.

"We entered this before the Olympics. It was something to look forward to after the Games," he explained. He said he very much enjoyed it, despite falling in at the last weir, at Chapelizod.

The day was all the sweeter because after a term as a full-time athlete in the successful British squad he starts his first day today as a full-time doctor.

Thomastown-based British woman Sarah Lang (28) denied Eileen Murphy her accustomed domination of the women's K1 event, winning in 2:21:34.