Olympic ambition keeps rep at home

KAYAKING
As the New Zealand junior canoe slalom team flew out for Europe last week, Sean Travers was back in Tauranga, swinging off the end of a chainsaw with a wistful look on his face.
The 18-year-old C1 racer was initially selected for the eight-strong team but made the toughest of calls to pull out, instead setting his sights on an ambitious bid to make it to the 2012 Olympics.
While the junior team - including his younger sister Kelly - are building towards next month's junior world championships at Foix in the Pyrenees, Travers is back home chopping and selling firewood to make the trip next year.
"It was a lot of money for me and I couldn't really warrant it," Travers said.
"I needed at some point to get bigger and stronger as well so I decided to give it a miss this year and instead do some fundraising and get ready for next year."
The junior team is again chocka with Western Bay talent. Seven of the eight athletes who landed in Paris on Saturday are local, with Jane Nicholas, Kelly Travers, Alana Wood, Haven Bellamy, Callum Gibb and Te Puke's Carl Whitehead joining Gore's Malcolm Gibson.
Sean Travers went on the trip last year but is heading to Queenstown to study this year and wants a head-start on a three-month European trip next year, which he estimates will cost him around $13,000.
"I've been doing a lot of firewood lately and do any job I can get my hands on at the moment.
"The more I can earn, the more time I can have over there where the competition is. The physical work is also good because I'm trying to get my power-to-weight ratio up a bit more and get physically prepared, with better endurance and everything."
This year's campaign is special for his sister Kelly, however, after the Tauranga Girls' College student pulled out of the team two years ago and missed selection last year. She made the team this time in K1 and will also paddle C1 at the junior worlds in a development opportunity.
The junior team has spent much of the summer training under French coach Thomas Masuy, who left at the end of May to be with some of the seniors in Europe.
It promises to be a big trip for Nicholas and Gibb, who will also race in senior world cup events.
This is Gibb's third year in the team, while Nicholas and older sister Ella, now studying in Dunedin, will also fly back to Europe to compete in the world championships in Slovenia later in the year.
Gibb continues to kick on in his K1 career, winning the Australian junior title this year and finishing behind Tauranga's Mike Dawson at the senior nationals.