Kayla Imrie was part of the NZ K4 500m team that won the World Cup Kayaking Regatta in Portugal last night holding off teams from Poland and Hungary.
According to the article on the SportsHub website, teammate Jaimee Lovett said: “The goal was to put a race plan together and see how we went,” a jubilant Lovett said. “We went pretty well in the heat and stuck to that plan and the final was just about enjoying it, embracing it and putting a good race together, which we managed to do.”
Canoe Racing New Zealand chief executive Mark Weatherall knows next weekend’s world cup in Germany will provide a much tougher test for his paddlers but believes things are building nicely, heading into an Olympic year.
“We’re still a long way out from Rio and there is still a huge amount of hard work to do but this is an emphatic statement that we’re on the right track,” Weatherall said. “We’re seeing the result of significant investment from High Performance Sport New Zealand and significant commitment from the athletes and we want to keep building on that in the next year but I really couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the international season.”
Congratulations to Kayla who along with her brother Kurtis is going well in her quest for Rio.
Kayla is 4th from the left, Lisa Carrington is 1st left