THE original canoe club in Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Canoe Club, based at Wemmer Pan, whose members use the Klip River as their training grounds, hosted the two-day 60km Klip River training race to provide an opportunity for seeding and start batching at the upcoming Dusi race.This year the Dusi takes place from February 15 to 17 from Pietermaritzburg to Durban, the world’s toughest canoe endurance event.
The training race took place on January 27 and 28, from Daleside on the Klip River, towards the Vaal junction in Three Rivers, covering a distance of some 32km each day and including a few sections where paddlers have to take their boat out of the water and run a short distance before putting back into the river. The river level was high this past weekend as a result of the frequent rainstorms throughout the South/East and West of Gauteng – where the water finds its way to the Klip River.
The winning combination was Piers Cruickshanks, a school teacher/head of department from Rosebank whose book,Confluence, was recently made into a very successful movie – Beyond the River. It tells the story about a privileged paddler and a severely economically depressed youth from Soweto informal settlements who achieved a top 10 gold medal at the Dusi some years back, and the difficulties they had to overcome, partnered with another Soweto paddler originally from the Dusi Valley in Natal, Zonele Nzuza. They finished the two-day 64km race in 4:10.
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