“We had 11 teams spread across the age groups — J16, J19, open men and women, master women, and senior master men and women,” he said.
“We were motivated to a degree by the fact that these were the world club championships, in addition to an elite competition.
“Having been national club champions for five of the six years the title has been contested, we had a dream to conquer the world.”
No top-club award was made, but Walker calculated that, if points were awarded on the same basis they were in New Zealand, Horouta would have been “right up there”.
Walker sees a “science” emerging in the sport, with coaches having to decide crew make-up based on paddlers’ aptitude for different styles of racing: the requirements of power versus stamina, for example.
These issues arose for the coach of the J16 women’s crew, whose team success was one of the regatta highlights for Walker. They had only scraped into qualifying positions.
Only slightly better in qualifying were the open men’s crew, but they provided another highlight by winning silver in the V6 1500 metres.
The J19 women’s crew extended their unbeaten run, and national elite women’s coach Kiwi Campbell performed a juggling act to ensure that club crews were able to make best use of the elite paddlers they were allowed to include.
