Student David McClure and NUIG alumni Aoife Hanrahan made history in Paris on Saturday when they won gold and bronze at the European freestyle kayak championships. In doing so they helped the Irish team to its best performance at an international competition.
McClure, a current NUIG School of Business HDip student, won Ireland’s first senior men’s gold medal at the International Canoe Federation European freestyle championships. Hanrahan, a former NUIG elite sports scholarship student and BSc biotechnology graduate, became the first Irish woman to reach the podium at an ICF freestyle kayak event, winning bronze in the senior women’s category. Together they are only the third and fourth Irish kayakers to win a medal at an international freestyle event.
Canoeing Ireland said the results were a historic achievement for freestyle kayaking in this country.
“Just to put some perspective on last weekend’s excellent results: Twenty-four years ago, Ireland sent its first team to the freestyle world championships in Canada and since then we have sent teams to every world and European Championships,” said the organisation’s event manager Kipper Maguire. “It has been a long journey with many super performances over the years."
Medallists before the weekend were Moe Kelleher who won senior bronze at a World Cup in Canada and Len Kelleher who claimed a silver medal as a junior at the European championships in Spain.
In addition to the medals, Ireland secured six places in the semi-finals across the men’s, women’s and junior categories – the highest number of qualifiers for the Irish team yet. Rory Kearney (Clonmel freestyle kayaker ), Leah Hough, Fionn McNally and Anaïs O'Donovan all made it through, alongside Hanrahan and McClure.
Freestyle kayaking is a whitewater discipline where the kayaker uses the force of the water to perform tricks on a particular feature of a rapid. In competition, the tricks are scored by judges over three, 45-second heats with the competitor’s final ranking being based on his/her best ride.
Hanrahan started strongly in the final on Saturday, sticking several high-scoring moves such as McNastys and air loops to land 363.33 points on her first heat. That was enough to earn the 25-year-old full time Royal College of Surgeons pharmacy student the bronze medal behind Poland’s multiple ICF medallist Zofia Tula, who scored 463.33 points in her final heat. Former two-time junior world champion Ottilie Robinson-Shaw, from Britain, won gold with 750 points.
McClure, who finished fifth in the last world championships in 2019, went into the final day at the Olympic course in Vaires-sur-Marne in first place following the semi-finals. He put in a near-flawless performance in the finals, linking a galaxy of moves such as McNastys, lunar orbits and space Godzillas to land a score of 1496.67 in his second heat. It was enough to see off the challenge from current world champion Joaquim Fontane I Maso, from Catalonia, who finished in second place on 1130 points.
