CORA Report – by Donna Harrison & Lynda Roberts
2016 IVF World Va’a Sprint Championships
Sunshine Coast, Australia May 8-15, 2016

Team Canada

Congratulations to all Team Canada paddlers, you did us proud with your awesome attitude and effort. Australia put on a great event and we’re pretty sure the paddlers made the most of their travelling adventures.
Canada’s Team included 83 paddlers age 15 to 80! The majority of paddlers were over 60, which is largely due to cost and time needed to travel to Australia. The location for 2018 is Tahiti, but hopefully 2020 will be voted for Hawaii so we can increase our total number of paddlers, specifically the younger age categories and juniors.

Medals Count

Canada won 5 medals. Our first Para-Canoe Gold V1 (250m) from Alison Downie of Calgary. Two V1 (500m) medals for our Master 70+. John Roberts, Gold and Stan Machacek with Bronze. Masters 70+ V6 (500m) Bronze (Brian Neil, John Roberts, Rick Walkey, Stan Machacek, Ole Christiansen and Otto Erdelsky) and Master 60+ V12 Bronze with Alex Vandenham, Pat McLellan, Martin Jalkotzy, Roman Matieschyn, Bob Stewart, Darrel Smith, Stan Machacek, Jim Senior, Doug Kazakoff, Randy Brooks, Dean Dogherty and John Roberts.

Club Crews vs Elite

Going forward, CORA will review the new format of Elite and Club crews and work towards the promotion of an Elite Crew and Club crews.
Although a time trial is required for V1 and Elite, there may be better ways to time trial for Club crews in regional areas to allow for more training as a crew.

Stay tuned for information regarding World Sprints 2018, Tahiti, June 28-July 5th. Time trials October 2017, dates tbc.

It was a great weekend for 70 of the 84 paddlers going to World Sprints this May.   With some rain on Saturday, and a lot more on Sunday afternoon, we came together on the water.  Some of us meeting for the first time.

Big thank you to Fort Langley Canoe Club for the use of their canoes, facilities, and friendly faces.   Bigger thanks to Lynda Roberts and the Calgary Canoe Club for driving through snow and sleet to run the camp and supply the V1’s!   Leanne Stanley was there to provide some great coaching tips, please use her as a resource.

Keep training, keep communicating with your team mates!   CORA has a few more sprint races before May, so try to get as many of your team mates out.

See you all in Australia this May!

Attention Long Distance paddlers! Are you interested in representing Canada at the 2017 IVF World Distance Championships? This inaugural event will be hosted in Tahiti from June 3-5, 2017. Subsequent IVF World Distance Championships will be held every 2 years, offsetting years of the IVF World Sprint Championships. For detailed information consult the IVF website.

The CORA board would like to gauge member interest in attending this inaugural IVF World Distance Championship event. We are asking all interested individuals to fill out the online intent-to-compete registration form (link expired) by June 15, 2016 to determine if there will be a need for crew selection race-offs.