Canoeing: Fouhy eyes swift route to K1 final

By DANIEL GILHOOLY in Athens

New Zealand Olympic medal hopeful Ben Fouhy is confident he can make one swift jump to the K1 1000m canoeing final next week after receiving a favourable draw.

While he and Steven Ferguson had received a more testing draw for the K2 1000m heat, Fouhy was pleased to find himself without any of his three leading rivals in the K1 opener on Monday.

Fouhy, Canadian Adam van Koeverden, Norwegian Eirik Veraas Larsen and Australian Nathan Baggaley are regarded as the four leading contenders for the gold here next week.

Veraas Larsen and Baggaley - who beat Fouhy home at the most recent World Cup event three months ago - have been drawn in the same heat, bringing a smile to world champion Fouhy.

Four stars into three heats always meant two would be unlucky.

The winners of Monday's heats will qualify directly for the nine-man final on Friday, leapfrogging Wednesday's semifinals.

"You want to race fast in your first heat," said Fouhy.

"Everything going to plan, I'll win that and I won't have to do a semi in the middle of the week."

World champion Fouhy said the standard below the top four had improved this year but he was confident of qualifying.

He was also pleased to see some of his rivals had added races to their programmes, possibly impacting on their K1 1000m focus and fitness. Baggaley and Veraas Larsen are both competing in two other classes.

Fouhy and Ferguson will line up against tricky K2 1000m heat opponents in Australia, Sweden and Italy but because of the smaller size of the field they will only need a top-three finish to qualify for the finals.

Ferguson was named in the K1 500m draw but he wanted to withdraw from that event to protect his injured back and leave him free to concentrate on the K2 race.

However, regatta rules say to do so would mean forfeiting every crew he is down to contest.

It means he will have to complete the heat on Tuesday slowly enough to ensure he doesn't qualify for the semifinals.

It was a scenario that irked the competitive Aucklander.

"If I have to do it, I don't want to paddle down the course slowly," Ferguson said.

" Hopefully I can pull out of it altogether. We'll just wait and see what happens."

Ferguson said he could still train despite the odd back spasm. The biggest difficulty had been long bus rides this week between the athletes' village and the course.

- NZPA