Best of Luck to Team Ireland at the World Cup Race in Portugal

This weekend the the Marathon World Cup takes place in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. We are delighted to see a large Irish team attend the event. Racing in Senior Mens K1 is Barry Watkins and Brian O’Neill of Salmon Leap . Ireland has 5 representatives in the Junior Mens K1 race with last years European Bronze medalist Ronan Foley from Kilcullen being accompanied by Matthew McCartney from Celbridge Paddlers and Salmon Leaps trio of Oisin Mulligan, Odhran Henson and Cormac Slattery. In the Junior Womens K1 race Kate McCarthy of Salmon Leap and Aine White of Celbridge Paddlers race. On top of this Declan Halton and Eddie Martin of Salmon Leap will paddle in the Masters World Cup races.

Racing starts Friday evening with the short course heats for the senior classes. These are run over a 3.5km course with 2 portages. The fastest 6 paddlers from each heat qualifies for the finals which take place on Saturday. For the Junior’s all short course races take place on Saturday morning. The Masters take to the water Saturday afternoon. On Sunday the long distance marathon races take place with some big fields. Both the Senior and Junior Mens race are expected to have more than 80 competitors racing.

You can watch the action via live stream action on the ICF youtube channel LINK. We will do our best to keep you updated with results as they come in. Best of luck to all the paddlers in their races. We would also like to wish Jenny Egan the best of luck as she races the sprint World Cup event in Duisburg, Germany this weekend.