Whitewater Rafting: Bay's Cairns to compete at her sixth worlds

New Zealand's open women's whitewater rafting team in action at the 2015 world championships. Photo/Supplied

Hawke's Bay Olympian Anne Cairns will represent New Zealand at her sixth world whitewater rafting championships next week.

The Havelock North-based firefighter, who represented Samoa in kayaking at the Rio Olympics, will be a member of the New Zealand open women's team at the October 2-9 champs which will be staged on the Yoshinagawa River in Shikoku, Japan. Cairns, 36, will be the only Hawke's Bay member of her six-strong crew and, like the other paddlers who all come from Bay of Plenty, has plenty of whitewater rafting and kayaking, canoe slalom and waka ama on her sporting CV.

Her first world championships were in 2001 when her crew won the world title on the Zambezi River in Africa. They retained the title in 2003 in the Czech Republic, finished third in 2011 in Costa Rica, regained the title in 2013 in New Zealand and finished second in 2015 in Indonesia.

Cairns, who recently returned from winning the Le Aito V1 women's title at the week-long waka ama (va'a) Alo Paopao paddle festival, pointed out her whitewater rafting crew has been able to have several training camps since winning the national title in Murchison in March. Bay of Plenty's Rangitaiki, Kaituna and Tarawera rivers were used for these.

"Whitewater raft racing is quite a big sport throughout Europe and New Zealand has always done well across both men's and women's divisions and throughout the classes, from under-19s through to masters," Cairns explained.

She pointed out the overall world title in each division is decided over four races which hold different weighting. The individual rapid sprint time trial is a race against the clock, worth 10 per cent, and it also establishes the seedings for the head to head sprints. The head to head sprints are worth 20 per cent and see teams compete in knockout battles which can be brutal - bleeding knuckles from clashing paddles are not uncommon.

The raft slalom is worth 30 per cent and is the same as slalom kayaking where a number of upstream and downstream gates have to be negotiated with a five second penalty imposed for any gate touch and a 50 second penalty for a missed gate. Lastly, the downriver race is worth 40 per cent and this long endurance race is held over a course which can take up to 60 minutes and sees teams start in groups of four so there are other teams as well as rapids to negotiate.

"Our team's strength has tended to be in the downriver and slalom which is really important, especially with the weighting of points, however there are a lot of strong women's teams including current world champions Czech Republic to contend with. Other strong contenders in the past have been Great Britain, Slovakia, Brazil and Japan ... all it takes is one or two bad results and the top three overall placings can change dramatically," Cairns said.

"Obviously, our goal is to do as well as possible in every event to give us the best chance of stepping up from the second place recorded at the last worlds. To do that we really have to do well in the downriver and slalom events, as well as the sprints to give us the best shot."

Cairns doesn't expect next week's champs to be as testing as in 2015 when most of the competitors fell ill at one time or another because the river was used as a place to wash, clean, toilet, dump rubbish and send drain runoff into. Most teams had members in the medic tent on drip at various stages.

"Our team travelled with seven members so we were able to cover it when one person fell sick and couldn't race. The river we race on next week is in a clean forest park area with grade four plus rapids. It is well known for being a really great river for racing as well as recreational rafting," Cairns added.

Cairns will be one of four Hawke's Bay paddlers in the Kiwi contingent. Roni Nuku is in the masters women's team, her hubby Mike is in the masters men's team and their daughter Te Waia O Tauranga Nuku is in the under-19 girls team.

The Nuku trio and Cairns are all members of the Haeata Ocean Sports Inc Waka Ama Club and when they return from Japan they will compete at the New Zealand Long Distance Waka Ama Nationals in Napier on October 13 and 14.