The winners of the 2025 SA K2 titles at the Fish River Canoe Marathon in Nxuba at the weekend took vastly different routes to claim victory, with women’s winners Hilary Bruss and Bridgitte Hartley cruising home by almost 20 minutes, while East London’s Andy Birkett and Hamish Lovemore’s win was in doubt until just before the finish.
Bruss and Hartley were in a class of their own in the women’s race, and despite some unusual errors, the victory was never really in doubt.
However, Lovemore and Birkett had to overcome a stern test of tactics, speed and fitness by Greg Louw and Matthew Fenn before claiming the men’s title.
The men’s race looked to be a tight three-horse race, but when defending SA champion Clint Cook and his French partner Jeremy Candy swam in Keith’s Flyover Rapid, early on day one on Friday, the race was reduced to two protagonists — though the leaders constantly kept a wary eye over their shoulders to check the Cook and Candy crew were not powering back into contention.
Up front, the two leaders were locked in a tense battle for superiority on day two on Saturday.
“We had a bit of a battle until the dying moments,” Birkett said. “At Marlow’s Causeway [about 10km from the finish] they managed to get past us. At the put in from the portage we almost fell in but managed to right ourselves by grabbing their boat.
“Just after the causeway there is a chicken run and we managed to get through that with a two-boat gap and get away from them there,” he said.
“On day two, the racing and tactics were not one-sided at all. We were there to try to win, and they were there to try. They were trying hard to make us more tired and we were trying hard to make them tired. It was different from day one, where it was a lot more conservative on both sides,” Birkett said.
“Day two, it was definitely on from the word ‘go’. They would pick it up in every rapid to try to tire us out ... and we would do that as well if we had a little gap on them — we would try to tire them out as well.
“I appreciate racing against Matt and Greg, because they’ll give it a good go ... with them you know you are in for a hard race and they’re not going to let you have it easily — which is 100% what we want,” Birkett said, before adding, “But it is fair... they would never put us into a thornbush, so it’s nice, fair racing”.
It was Birkett’s seventh victory at the Fish River Marathon (including three K2 wins with Louw) and Lovemore’s first win.
In contrast, the women’s race was virtually decided early on day one, despite Bruss and Hartley surviving a scare when Hartley fell out at the bottom of Double Trouble Weir.
Bruss, remarkably, managed to roll the boat back up and retrieve her partner.
From there, Bruss and Hartley paddled away and started day two with more than a 12-minute lead, which they had extended by another 7 minutes by the time they reached Nxuba — despite Bruss having to rescue her partner for a second time on day two after Hartley repeated her solo swim at Cradock Weir.
“[The swim at Double Trouble] was the only real problem we had on the first day... we spun out at Soutpans but everything else was perfect,” four-time race winner Hartley said
“Then on day two, I fell out again... and Hilary stayed in the boat again, so we had to empty. She managed to save herself by somehow tipping the boat back after I was already out. Sort of a half roll ... my Eskimo rolling partner.
“But the rest of the day went perfectly.”
Gameplan Media
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