KEY POINTS:
New Zealand paddlers have produced a series of tidy results at the second World Cup canoeing regatta in Duisberg, Germany.
K2 1000m pair Steven Ferguson and Mike Walker finished fourth in their A final, after winning their heat to progress straight to the decider.
A poor second quarter cost the New Zealanders, who were fifth at 250m but slipped to eighth in the next 250m. They clocked 3min 23.991s in a race won by Canadians Richard Dober and Andrew Willows, who recorded 3:22.367.
Ferguson and Walker had pipped the Canadians by .36s to win their heat the previous day. In a tight final, the first four finishers were covered by 1.6s.
Athens Olympic silver medallist Ben Fouhy and New Zealand's only woman representative in the squad, Erin Taylor, both finished fifth in their A finals over the same distance.
Fouhy, in his first regatta of the campaign after missing the World Cup opener in Hungary with a cold, was third in his heat and third in the semifinal, making the A final by just .200s.
In the final, Fouhy, who improved from seventh at the halfway mark, clocked 3:33.397. Briton Tim Brabants won the final in 3:28.925 with 2004 Olympic gold and bronze medallists, Norwegian Eirik Veraas Larsen and Adam van Koeverden of Canada taking second and third.
Taylor is contesting the K1 500m at the Beijing Olympics, but did well in the longer event, recording 4:03.743.
She was ninth at the 250m mark but made steady progress through the field. Germany Katrin Wagner-Augustin won in 3:56.401.
Fouhy, Ferguson and Taylor were all in K1 500m semifinals to be raced late last night. It is Ferguson's Olympic single seat event and he won his heat in 1:41.987.
Fouhy was third in his heat, but in a marginally quicker time, 1:41.853. Taylor was sixth in her heat in 2:00.489s.
