Dusi Kings 2010

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Wednesday, 17 March 2010 16:19

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Taking down the Big Guns

A skinny multisport kid and a dark horse who never quite cracked it held off a powerhouse combo at this year’s Hansa Powerade Dusi Canoe Marathon. Andrew Birkett and Jason Graham’s victory will be recorded as one of the biggest upsets in the race’s history.

Would you have won the Dusi if Ant Stott and Michael Mbanjwa hadn’t taken a swim on day three?
J: I suppose I should be diplomatic and say that the race could have gone either way, but where’s the fun in that? It’s a three day race and we led for about 90% of it. Nevertheless, Ant and Mike had an absolute stormer on Burma Road portage, capitalising on a heavy fall we took on the way up to open up a gap of about a minute and a half by the put-in.
Our strength throughout the race seemed to be our transition paddling, meaning we recovered quickly and paddled at a good pace after a hard run. So we were able to close 20 seconds on them in only about two kilometres of paddling from the put-in to Pump House Weir, where they took their swim.
I guess my favourite stat is that after their swim, Ant and Mike paddled off only 40 seconds behind us, and at the finish we had opened the gap to over three minutes.
A: It would have been close because we were catching them before their swim but anything could have happened... hey, we could have had a swim and they could have won but we didn’t swim!

Buy the Mar/Apr 2010 issue to read the full interview