Carl Whitehead star of overseas kayaking tour

Te Puke's Carl Whitehead starred as the New Zealand junior canoe slalom team finished their tour of the United States and Canada better than the four-week trip started.
The national team's kayaks were inadvertently left in Los Angeles while they completed the 40-hour trip north to Ottawa, with many of the high-spec boats not arriving for over a week, leaving the young Kiwi contingent wondering if their fundraising and hours of travel had been worth it.
With borrowed boats from Canadians and the Australian junior team, the Kiwis finally got some paddling prep done, with Whitehead the star performer, his best result coming in the Wausau Open in Wisconsin with a second placing.
Whitehead, 18, was only beaten by top American junior Michal Smolen, fresh from winning US senior selection races, but held off the rest of the American, Canadian and Australian paddlers, with Alexandra's Finn Butcher third in the event held at the venue for next year's junior world and inaugural under-23 world championships.
Whitehead also won the Andrew Westlake Memorial slalom in Canada and three out of the four slalom races in the Teva series, where he finished sixth overall, including seniors, despite not competing in the rodeo events that form part of the series.
He now heads to Germany, where he will meet up with another top New Zealand junior, Callum Gibb, to race a European Teen Cup series. Gibb has been the reserve boat in the senior national team and was able to paddle two of the recent senior World Cup events.
The Teen Cup is raced over four courses in Slovenia and Slovakia and will see the Kiwi boys pitted against the top Europeans, who are fresh from the European junior championships in Bosnia.
Tauranga Boys' College Year 12 student Cole O'Connor-Stratton produced some great paddling performances to finish fifth overall in the Teva series, second in the Minden/Gull race and also the B final at Wausau, giving him a good look at the course for next year's world juniors.
The final race on tour was the Carlton slalom in Duluth in the United States and another Tauranga Boys' College paddler Laurence Brown finished his tour on a high note with bronze in the K1 junior slalom.
In this same race Kelly Travers, now studying at Massey University, took the junior C1 women's title, having the previous week taken bronze in the junior K1 women at Wausau, fourth in the women's Teva series and seconds at Ottawa in the K1 and C1.
Unfortunately for Tauranga Girls' Anna Higgins, a shoulder injury kept her sidelined and unable to race in the final slaloms. Having won a down river race in Canada, a sticky hole on the Wausau course ended her tour.