Olympic kayaker Mike Dawson is bracing for a wild couple of days as he waits to compete in an extreme race in North Carolina, on the southern fringes of the superstorm which battered the east coast of the United States.
The 26-year-old Waiariki Institute of Sport paddler is due to
paddle the Green Race in Asheville this weekend but his preparations have been thrown awry by the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, which combined with a cold-weather system and turned into a 1600km hybrid battering eight states.
"Sandy is a huge storm - it's blowing hard, the temperature has dropped to just above zero and snow is beginning to flurry down outside," Dawson said yesterday from Asheville. It's going to make the final few days of preparation interesting, and if the weather is like this on race day, it's going to be very cold in the gorge."
Dawson made the semifinals of the K1 whitewater slalom at the London Olympics and is one of the world's best extreme kayakers - true to form, he's hoping the wild weather actually has a positive spin.
"We've spent the last few days waiting for the rain to come, hoping that we might be able to get out and explore some of the rain-fed whitewater in North Carolina! But it's pretty amazing to be here at the moment, on the fringe of this weather system.
