The short notice and late advice regarding the rescheduling of this race in Upington, a good 10 hours drive minimum from Gauteng main area’s, resulted in a very low turnout from Gautenger paddlers – especially as it is a 3 day event, needing more than 2 full days of travelling, making it a 5 day away race. Photos can be found here!
It is truly a superb area of the country and beautiful scenery, amazing history, a wonderful river and the only inhabited islands of South Africa……..well worth a visit and ideal to make it into a family getaway if timeous dates could be scheduled on the calendar to enable proper planning.
We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the area last year near Easter and would like to encourage more paddlers to enjoy the race with sufficient notice for planning purposes the race could grow exponentially!
The race, which covers nearly 100km and has only a few challenging rapids (nothing as challenging as the challenging ones on FISH or even those we are wary of on Klip), only saw 39 boats finishing in total, due largely to the long drive and short notice of the new date.
From Gauteng, the only paddlers representing us were the Sowetans, with Siseko Ntondini and Thando Ngamlana finishing 4th overall in 7 hours 3 minutes as the first Under 23 team, whle Loveday Zondi with his younger brother finished 9th overall in 7:19.
The Under 18 team of Siyabonga Tyiki and Simnikiwe Ntondini finished 4th in their category in 8 hours 8 minutes in 18th position with Mfundo Sithole and Sipho Qoko next as 6th Under 23’s.
A Dabs paddler Willem van Riet won the Sub Master category with Willem van Riet JNR finishing 29th overall in 9 hours 8 minutes.
And that was it – fluit fluit…..!
Thanks to Nick Warren for the video link herewith which actually was REALLY very well done and superb music as he promised.
ENJOY
Regards
Jennie Dallas
GCU PR
082 857 857 1