Masters rafting the world

GATEWAY: The Okere Women's Masters Rafting team at the world cup event in Yushu in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Niki Whitehead (back left), Miriam Odlin, (front left) Denise Martin (back right) and Kylie Laxton-Blinkhorn.

The Okere Masters Women's Rafting Team are the current National Masters Champions and, as such, have qualified to compete in the Rafting World Championships in the United Arab Emirates in November.

The team of Alana Whiteman, Miriam Odlin, Denise Martin and Kylie Laxton-Blinkhorn won the national title in Auckland. Whiteman and Odlin were part of the New Zealand team that won last year's world title, while team captain Martin holds a Guinness World Record for having the most consecutive wins in World Rafting Championships.

In winning the national title, the team also received an invitation to a world cup event in Yushu in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, where they took first place.

Whiteman was unable to make the trip and was replaced by Niki Whitehead.

The quartet has been together since February, with Laxton-Blinkhorn the newcomer to rafting, although she has 20 years' experience in white water kayaking.

"I've enjoyed the training," said Laxton-Blinkhorn. "It's challenging and I've certainly had a steep learning curve, but it's going well.

"We are all quite experienced - we've all been on rivers for 20 years or more and travelled around the world."

In Yushu, the team won the head to head and slalom races, that includes down-and upstream gates.

"The water levels came up on our run - the course was set at the low water level - which made it quite interesting, but we still won."

They also did well in the 12km down river and sprint races. Laxton-Blinkhorn said grit and determination won the day.

Rotorua is a hotbed of rafting, but any team has to gel.

"Working together as a team is really important. We have to have really good communication because we are calling commands and directions to each other the whole time. Being able to read a river is key as well and that's part of the communication - seeing eddy lines and being able to communicate back to the team as to what your intentions are are critical, so everybody works together at the same time. It's it's quite synchronised."

Experience was a key element to rafting.

"Every river brings it own challenges. The river we did the long distance race on was a small river that went down to the Yangtze and the Yangtze is enormous compared to the river we were on. The strength of the river changes, so you need to be able to understand that and respond and move the raft so that it's safe but still fast - it's definitely a key thing."

While Laxton-Blinkhorn has used her kayaking skills in rafting, there are other sports that transition well.

"Rotorua has quite a strong waka ama community and waka ama transfers quite readily. We all do waka ama as part of our training."

With Whiteman now back in the team, preparation was well under way for the world championships.

"We are working on stamina and doing a lot of slalom gates as well, because they are probably the trickiest element - if we can get those dialled in, we can pretty much get the sprint and the head to head covered as well."

Laxton-Blinkhorn said the team hoped to fundraise enough money to at least cover flights to the United Arab Emirates.