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One of the
strongest South African squads ever is about to head for Hawaii to take part in this year's Molokai
Challenge.
We caught up with some of the
paddlers and asked them how their training was going.
Clint Pretorius
The 22 year
old Clint Pretorius will be defending his title - he won the race last year
having paddled most of the route with Oscar Chalupsky. On the final 3km stretch he took a deeper,
straighter line while Oscar went close inshore along Chinaman's Wall. The offshore route was the better line and
Clint gained enough distance to hold off the charging Oscar at the finish.
 Clint Pretorius - defending champion
Is he as
strong now as he was this time last year?
"Difficult to say," he commented. "I'm paddling this weekend in an
adventure race, so I've been tapering off a little for that."
At Molokai, tactics are everything. "After last year I'm confident in the
conditions," Clint said. "You have to know how hard to go at the
beginning. Last year I was keen to go flat
out at the start, but I watched the other guys and hung back with them."
Pretorius,
Oscar and Australian Clint Robinson stuck together for most of the route before
the two South Africans managed to drop Robinson 10km from the end. (The former Olympic 1000m champion fought
back in the last 3km and finished only twenty seconds behind Oscar.)
Clint
refused to be drawn on the pressure of being defending champion. "It's going to be interesting..."
Bevan Manson
Bevan, 29,
is a relative newcomer to the surf ski scene having competed "seriously" for
less than a year. As a top water polo
player though he clearly has the upper body strength for the sport and has made
rapid progress, coming fourth in the 2007 King of the Harbour race in Auckland,
New Zealand.
"We've been
training very hard!" he said, "I think we've done six 50km downwind runs. It helps being in a family business - I can
take the time off to paddle. I don't
think people realise just how hard these guys train."
Bevan said
that one of the biggest challenges is to know how to pace oneself. "I haven't really gone for it yet in any of
the training runs up to now," he said.
"We've still got a couple of runs before we leave and I'm going to try
going flat out and see what happens."
Hank McGregor
Dawid Mocke
may have won more of the overseas ski races than anyone else but Hank is the
undisputed paddling superstar within South Africa, being the current SA
champion in K1, K2, single ski and double ski.
Surf ski is
only part of Hank's focus this year as he intends competing in (and winning)
the SA Marathon K1 championships, the Berg
River marathon as well as races in Europe.
 Hank McGregor - SA K1, K2, Surfski singles and doubles champion
Part of the
problem with surf ski is the lack of prize money in surf ski races. "It's difficult to take the time off work,"
he said, "to compete in a race and then come home with nothing, or at best your
airfare!" He'll be back in Durban to defend his World Cup title (no lack of prize
money there), and he intends coming to Cape Town
in December to compete in the 56km Cape Point
Challenge.
Hank
regards downwind paddling as particularly challenging. "You have to get to know how to pace it," he
said, "or you can exhaust yourself on a single wave." Downwind paddling is a mind game where you
have to accept that your rival might gain 200m in five seconds. The trick is to find your own ride to make up
the deficit - without wasting energy.
"This is sometimes difficult for me," commented Hank, "as I like to be
in front."
In contrast
to many of today's paddlers, Hank doesn't use a GPS. "I might get one in Hawaii for the race, but I'm not a gadget
guy," he said. "I use Oscar as my GPS!"
The
training has been good. "We've been
doing the equivalent of a Molokai almost every
day," he said. "The runs in Durban are different to those in Cape
Town, and no doubt different to those in Hawaii."
His goals
for Molokai?
"It'll be a great experience just to be part of it," he said, "and we'll
see what happens on the day. Clint won
on his first attempt, so anything can happen!"
And apart
from anything else, "it's not a bad place to spend two weeks paddling!"
Dawid Mocke
The Durban paddlers say that Dawid is at a disadvantage,
training by himself in Cape Town for Molokai. After
all, conditions in Durban are much more similar
to Hawaii:
warm water and a straight coastline that offers 50-60km downwind runs. And they have four or five of the best
paddlers in the world training together.
 Dawid Mocke - has won more international titles in the last year than anyone else.
But Dawid
has managed to pull off some impressive wins in the last year despite being
based in the Cape: 2nd in the 2006 World Cup race in Durban; 1st in the 2006 US Champs; 1st
(against Oscar and Hank McGregor) in the 2006 Dubai Shamal; 1st
(against Oscar) in the 2007 New
Zealand King of the Harbour.
He's also
beaten Oscar in a one to one downwind match in Cape Town (See Millers Run Fun article) just
before King of the Harbour.
Dawid
recently made a career decision to focus on surf ski paddling rather than
K1.
He'll be
staying in Durban after Molokai
to train for the SA World Cup, in which he was runner up behind Hank McGregor
last year. Then he hopes to travel to
the Caribbean, and to San Francisco
to defend his US Championship title. He'd like to take part in the "Round
Manhattan Race" in New York
two weeks later "if the prize money is enough to justify it. Can you imagine driving from San
Francisco to New York? A road trip of note!" The Australian World Cup in Perth followed by Dubai Shamal will round the
year off.
His
training program had has a slight hiatus has a result of a bout of Tick Bite
Fever. He's not fazed and feels he's been
doing the mileage. In contrast to the Durban squad, his training has taken place in the cold Cape waters and he hasn't been able to do non-stop long
distance downwind runs. He's spent a lot
of time in waves though and whenever the southeaster has blown, he's been on
the Millers Run near Simonstown, recently completing a record six consecutive
runs in one day.
On the face
of it Dawid is keeping his Molokai
expectations realistic. "It's a
difficult race for a novice to win," he said.
"Doing 60km is one thing, but maintaining the focus required for
downwind paddling for 3 ½ hours is something else."
Oscar Chalupsky
Chatting to
Oscar, you sense that he's taking this Molokai
perhaps more seriously than ever before.
The 44 year old - as much as 22 years older than the competition - has been
training hard.
Bevan
Manson, who's probably spent more time training with the big O than anyone else
this year (and who shared "Oscar's Long Swim" a couple of months ago) reckons
the big man is going "the best he's ever gone".
 Oscar Chalupsky - looking for his 12th Molokai title
Oscar
agrees. When asked about the other
paddlers in the group, he said: "Hank's going well, he's only a couple of
minutes behind! Clint's a few minutes
more off the pace with Bevan coming up behind."
According to Oscar, Hank is the only one who can keep up when they
paddle intervals on the flat water in Durban
harbour after their downwind runs.
"We're doing about 15.5km/h for three kilometres or so," he said, "Hank
can stay on my wave, but Clint can't keep up."
"But those
youngsters are strong," he went on, "they'll do five sets of twenty pull ups,
adding weights until they can't do them anymore."
"When I
started training for Molo this year, I weighed 120kg and I could do one pull
up," he added, "now I weigh 107kg and I can do five!" He's aiming to weigh 103kg on race day.
 Training run with Bevan, Hank, Clint - Oscar's GPS track
To see the
GPS data from Oscar's recent training run, click here:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2564782
Competition from other nations
Apart from
the first three races, Hawaiian paddlers haven't had a look in at Molokai, which has been dominated by the Australians (15
victories) and South Africans (13 victories - 11 of them by Oscar Chalupsky).
Dean
Gardiner's run of nine wins ended in 2003 when Oscar came back to take his
tenth victory and South Africans have kept the title since then.
The South
Africa/Australia rivalry has been given impetus by the Australian performance
in the 2007 Cricket World Cup - South Africans don't really mind who wins Molokai (or any other sport for that matter) so long as
it's not an Australian!
This year's
entry list looks more impressive than ever before, however, with at least 46
overseas (i.e. non US) paddlers already registered. Some 16 Aussies will be there (and
interestingly, neither Dean Gardiner nor Clint Robinson is on the list.)
Local Talent
Hawaiian
resident Mark Sandvold came 6th overall last year and is paddling
one of only two V10E skis in existence. Along
with current Hawaii
champion Stuart Gaesnner and Sean Monaham, Mark probably represents the best
hope of a good US finish in the race.
 Mark Sandvold - powering past China Walls
"Huge
thanks to Epic," said Mark, "as they are really stepping it up this year to
take the Molokai to the next level. It will not only have the most challenging
open ocean course in the world but world class organization as well."
"The big O
amazes me," Mark went on. "The older he gets the more focused and driven he
seems to be. I have been paddling
against him here in Hawaii
since we were 18 and he truly is a force of nature when he gets on a ski and in
the water. Most of the time, it's all I
can do to just keep him in sight. Last
year I managed to stay by his side for nearly an hour before he and Clint
motored off. This year I would like to
say I stayed with him longer...I can only wish........"
Skis and Manufacturers
Adding a
touch of spice to this year's Molokai is the
competition between Fenn Kayaks and Epic Kayaks. According to Oscar Chalupsky, Epic's VP of
Sales, the V10 is ideally suited to the Molokai
conditions and he expects the V10 to triumph.
Among the
top South Africans, Hank McGregor and Bevan Manson will be paddling V10 Ultras;
Dawid Mocke and Clint Pretorius will be on Fenn Mako6 skis. Oscar of course will be on the super-light
and super-rigid V10E as will one of Hawaii's
top paddlers, Mark Sandvold - Epic's agent on the island
OC-1
Not to be forgotten - the OC1 fleet will be doing its best to stay with the skis. Karel Tresnak, jr will be looking for his seventh title...
 Karel Tresnak jr.
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