There was no fairytale finishers for the Wanganui canoeists representing New Zealand at the 2014 ICF Junior and U23 Canoe Sprint World Championship in Szeged, Hungary over the weekend.
Competing in the U23 K4 with teammates Benjamin Tinnelly and Alex Fort, Wanganui's Aiden Nossiter and Max Brown competing in the1000m heats, finished seventh of the eight boats in a time of 2m 58.773s , finishing 4 to 7 seconds behind the top crews of Spain, Russia and Australia.
That put them into the sole semifinal, with the top crews from the two heats already progressing to the final, and the Kiwis finished seventh again in a time of 2m 59.393s, behind the Canadian, Romanian and Serbian crews.
Their town mate Toby Brooke, competed in the Junior K4 1000m with Quaid Thompson, Taris Harker and Kurtis Imrie.
The young Kiwis finished fifth of seven crews in their heat, completing the course in 3m 9.816s during a race where the Russian crew broke the three minute mark, followed by the Czech Republic and Denmark teams.
In the semifinal, Brooke's crew made an improved time of 3m 4.844s, but were still eight seconds behind the winning Belarus team, who were followed by the Australian and Bulgarian crews.
The New Zealanders were going into the B Final overnight.
Imrie still provided the Kiwis best performance over the weekend by finishing fifth in the K1 1000m final, which was marked by the spectacular sight of Czech competitor Tomas Vesely capsizing, which allowed Belgium's Peter Artuur to collect his country's first Junior World Championship gold.
