NZ Canoe Sprint Team Heads to Milan for World Cup   22 Apr 2014

The New Zealand Open team departs today to commence their World Cup campaign in Europe. Their first assault will be on the ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup 1 in Milan with racing commencing 2 May.

Olympic and World Champion Lisa Carrington will again contest both the K1 200 and 500m distances while fellow World title holder Teneale Hatton contests her specialist event the 5000m along with Caitlin Ryan, and they both join up with Jaimee Lovett and Aimee Fisher in the K4 500m. This K4 is a new crew which has been together for only a short period but has shown there is good potential. The challenge for the crew is to bring the team together to extract this potential and change that into results at the international level.

Both Lisa and Teneale had stunning seasons last year in World Cup and World Champs events and will be looking to capitalise on that success this season.

Lisa came away with gold in the 200m and bronze in the 500m at the ICF World Championships whilst Teneale's gold in the 5000m was followed with titles in the U23 division of both the ICF Marathon World Championships and Ocean Surf Ski World Championships as well as a double ski gold in the Open women’s division.

The mens K4, with Olympian Darryl Fitzgerald joined by younger brother Jarrod along with Marty McDowell and Zac Quickenden is a changed combination from last year's crew and are confident they will improve on their current world ranking of 13th, driving towards an Olympic qualifying berth.

Competing in the Olympics quickest event, the men’s K2 200m high twitch combo of Scott Bicknell and Andrew Roy was tested successfully at the NSW State Champs where they took top honours and again at the NZ National Championship in February but, like the other team boats, is as yet untried at international level.

You can follow the racing on World Cup 1 Website or "Like" us on Facebook for regular updates.

World Cup website: http://www.milanworldcanoesprint.com

NZ Facebook page: www.facebook.com/canoeracing

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