Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Kayaking champ
Marlborough kayaker Matt Loveridge is excited about going to the ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships for the second year running.
The event will be held in Gyor, in Hungary, in September. Matt will participate in the under-23 section in the K1 race, which is 26 kilometres long, and in the 30km K2 race, where he will be paired with a kayaker from Canterbury.
Despite the name, the event is for kayakers, not canoers, Matt says.
There are six portages on the way, which involve getting out of your boat and carrying it for 100 metres.
Matt paddles throughout the year. He competes in sprint races as well, and usually does a couple of regattas every summer.
A multisporter, he has only been focusing on kayaking for two years but is totally committed to it.
‘‘It’s my life,’’ he says. ‘‘I love the physical challenge, and I enjoy the adventurous part of it as well.’’
While he enjoys both sprint and long-distance, he is strongest at the long-distance events, he says.
Kayaking is ‘‘like rugby’’ in Hungary, and Matt thinks there will up to 50 competitors in the races he is entering into.
Matt’s goal is to be in the top 20. The people he will be competing with are professional athletes, and comparing himself with them is like ‘‘comparing apples and oranges’’, he says.
The former Christchurch boy works fulltime at Gordon Handy Machinery in Blenheim as a mechanic and has received a lot of support from the company, he says.
To fundraise for his trip he has been doing some coaching. It is hard to juggle with his work and his training programme, which takes up an hour every morning and two hours at night. He also has a givealittle page, and is pleased with the support he has received from the public so far.
Although kayaking is what he is concentrating on, Matt enjoys taking part in the fun duathlon in Marlborough every year.
He began focusing on kayaking after he injured his knee and was unable to run. Until you start kayaking you do not appreciate how technical it is – it uses your whole body, he says.
‘‘You’ve got to be as efficient as possible.’’
He loves getting out on the water and says New Zealand has lots of great rivers for kayaking. He trains from the Blenheim Rowing Club at Wairau River at the moment.
There are about 25 kayakers in Blenheim and they have a club night every Tuesday. The sport is still small in New Zealand, and it would be good to raise the profile of kayaking, he says.
Matt has no fixed plans for what he wants to do in the sport, but says the world championships is as far as athletes are able to go if they are interested in marathon canoeing.
He could either keep trying to improve his time, or look more at sprinting, which is an Olympic sport.