For South Africa’s top sprint canoeists, the paddle to the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 starts at Roodeplaat Dam just outside Pretoria this weekend at the South African Championships.
Header image: Esti Olivier and the other South African Olympic hopefuls begin their journey to LA28 this weekend at the SA Champs on Roodeplaat Dam. (credit ICF/Gameplan Media)
The new qualifying system put in place by the International Canoe Federation for 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, kicks off in April with one of the key events for South African Olympic hopefuls the World Championships in August in Poland. The Friday to Sunday event on Roodeplaat Dam is the designated selection event for the SA team for those World Championships, and so is key to Hamish Lovemore and Esti Olivier and their hopes of paddling at LA28.
There is plenty on the line for other paddlers as well, with the three-day event also being used as the basis for selecting teams for the junior and U23 team to go to their World Championships in Canada in July, and the Olympic Hopes team for their regatta in Slovakia in September.
The top women’s sprinter in the country in recent years, Esti Olivier, is feeling confident and happy with her preparations for the regatta.
“My build-up has been amazing,” said the 33-year-old ranked 73rd in the world. “I’ve had a lot of training with some international paddlers that were based here throughout January, so I’m feeling very strong and comfortable in the boat at the moment.
“With the changes of qualifications on the international stage, I’m definitely seeing this weekend as the start of my racing for LA 2028. Paddlers are now going to have to put their best foot forward for two years. There’s no opportunity to waste with any bad races, because for South Africans it’s going to be expensive to do the events we need to do. So if you want to keep those expenses to a minimum you have to make the best out of every event.
“The plan for me is to do the World Cup in Hungary in May and then Brandenburg in Germany a week later. From there I’ll see, maybe do a friendly international event just to test where I’m at in July in Europe and then we’ve got World Champs in August in Poland.”
Olivier will be racing four events over the weekend, the 200m and 500m in a K1 and teaming up with probably her biggest rival in the singles event, Alexa Gooden, in the equivalent K2 races.
With his growing collection of international medals, Lovemore has been the men’s star of SA paddling for the past couple of years and sees the LA Olympics as his major long-term goal. The KZN canoeing coach is doing three events this weekend, the 500m, 1 000m and 5 000m, all in a single, before flying overseas on Saturday night to host a training camp in Spain.
“This is the first stepping stone of the season for me … I’ve go to try and make the SA team otherwise everything else for the rest of the year doesn’t happen,” said the world’s 64th ranked paddler with a laugh.
“I’ve been training really hard. I’ve been on training camp pretty much since the 4th of January – I’ve done three different training camps this year so I’m feeling really prepared.
“But there are a few young guys that are really fired up to bring it to me so I’m excited for the racing … it’s always good when the racing is hard.
“I think the guy to watch this weekend is definitely Uli Hart from Cape Town. He was second last year and I know he’s made a big effort to try and improve his sprinting as well. We are both from Team Euro Steel so we see each other’s training, but he is in Cape Town we don’t get much time to race against each other. This is going to be our first match-up for the year.”
The three day programme includes 248 scheduled events for paddlers from U10 through various age groups up to combined U23 and senior races from 200m up to 5 000m. The event is organised and hosted at the international venue by PaddleSport Eastern Cape and will be streamed live on SuperSport Schools.
