Hansa Powerade 50 Miler canoe marathon

An air of intrigue surrounds the weekend’s Hansa Powerade 50 Miler canoe marathon, as the season unashamedly shifts to preparations for the Dusi in mid January.

The 50 Miler course embraces the second half of the Dusi first day and the first half of the Dusi second day, while the second stage is identical to the Dusi final stage into Blue Lagoon in Durban.

A strong field has been assembled for the race which includes most of the paddlers that will be shortlisted as potential Dusi winners, bar the Dusi defending champion Hank McGregor, who has opted instead to head for the SA double ski championships in Knysna instead.

That leaves Len Jenkins as the clear favourite to take the two day race, and with it the tactical high ground in the crucial build-up to the Dusi in January.

Also in A batch are a number of potent K1 paddlers, all capable of winning the race and seriously contesting a podium place in the Dusi. Sven Bruss has been in excellent form, and he will start alongside his older brother Deon, and good friend Shaun Biggs.

Biggs, whose career in the SA K4 team has been truncated by commitments to his family’s nursery, is arguably the best river paddler in the country, and is coming off the training base that earned him a silver medal at the world marathon championships with Shaun Rubenstein.

Now paddling for Gauteng clubs Michael Mbanjwa and Loveday Zondi are both fixated on winning a Dusi K1 title and have both been preparing for this season with great determination. Both were raised in the Valley of a Thousand Hills and learnt to paddle at Robert Lembethes club at Nagle Dam, very close to the first stage of the 50 Miler course.

Also in contention are fellow Gauteng stars Jacques Theron, Piers Cruikshanks, Stu Rawlinson, Mike Stewart and Mike Harris, and local speedsters Brett Bartho, Jason Graham an Scott Rutherfoord, who is on the comeback trail.

The undisputed “Dusi Duke” Martin Dreyer is also in the field. While the 38 year old downplays his chances in the January showcase, he has a deep seated competitive streak that will make him a factor in virtually every race he takes part in. he has enjoyed a stellar year adventure racing, but has admitted to being lured back to the Dusi once again.

In the women’s race Alexa Lombard and Abbey Miedema line up alongside each other for what promises to be an intriguing race between two women who have both won the Dusi title. Carol Joyce is another top paddler who has opted to travel to Knysna instead of racing the 50 Miler.

The 50 Miler is also synonymous with cat-and-mouse tactics, as many paddlers with serious intentions of winning the Dusi title in January will be reluctant to show their hand in late November, and many opt to play a low key part in the 50 Miler and use it as part of their training and planning for the three day race in January,

The 50 Miler is sharply different to the Dusi, despite the fact that it shares the same two rivers. While the Dusi is blatantly designed around portages that either take short cuts or eliminate rough sections of river, the 50 Miler is intended to be a paddling race, and forces the paddlers to negotiate the rough water by outlawing most of the Dusi portages.

The first day starts just above Mission rapid and ends some distance below Ngumeni hill, with the second day starting at Nagle Dam and ending at Blue Lagoon in Durban.