Gold at World Kayak Marathon Championships

Andrew Morton, Head of Biology, finally struck gold at the World Kayak Marathon Championships. He has been racing kayaks since 1967, when he won his first race in Scotland. Since then he has paddled for Scotland on numerous occasions, and is still the second fastest kayak racer of all ages in Scotland. In the seventies he was an occasional member of the British Marathon and White Water Racing teams and more recently he has gained bronze and silver medals at the Masters’ World Championships. But the elusive gold was, of course, an ultimate goal.

The Marathon Championships is an annual event held in a different country each year. This year the event was held on the Dordogne in France. The open event is a genuine full marathon with four portages, where the kayakers have to jump out of their craft and run with them on sand for a hundred metres before re-entering the water. The Masters’ events are half-marathons with two portages, and attract hundreds of paddlers, all over the age of 35, from all over the world.

Andrew raced in the Grand Master event against 30 other paddlers, and won fairly easily in a time of 1 hour 45 minutes, two minutes ahead of the second-placed paddler from the Czech Republic. In fact his time was fast enough to have won a bronze medal in the age category below.

What next? Andrew has a good friend of the same age, who is the fastest senior marathon runner in the UK. So, he is looking for an equally fast cyclist, over the age of 60, who can join him and his running partner in a triathlon next June on the west coast of Scotland, which he hopes they can win outright!