International paddlers took a clean sweep of finals on the first day of the Whitewater XL canoe slalom championships in Auckland today.
Tauranga's Olympic silver medalist Luuka Jones was the best of locals, grabbing a couple of podium finishes, though she was an agonising 0.29secs behind Great British paddler Lizzie Neave in the women's K1 final.
The format featured a qualifying race through eight gates on the new Vector Wero Whitewater Park course, with the top-eight going through to quarterfinals, semifinals and a final. Neave, an Olympian on her home course in London in 2012, loved the experience.
"It was a really fun race format - something I'd never done before - and all the athletes really enjoyed it," Neave said. "The course is really good run - it's slightly smaller than what I'm used to training on but it's still technically challenging and really good for training and racing on."
Jones also grabbed third in the C1 division, her first attempt at the kneeling, single-bladed discipline in more than four years.