McGregor, Mocke fight back

With nine World Marathon champions in the Dusi field, the first day was always going to be hotly contested, despite it being wet and drizzly.

With nine World Marathon champions in the Dusi field, the first day was always going to be hotly contested, despite it being wet and drizzly. What was a little more unexpected, however, was the drama that unfolded minutes into the race.

The day certainly belonged to winners Andy Birkett and Lance Kime, with a time of 2:36:40, but the will and firepower of their challengers, after that early drama, was definitely the talking point.

Two of the race favourite boats, Hank McGregor and Jasper Mocke’s, and Andy Birkett and Lance Kime’s, met up at Ernie Pearce Weir at the same time as Len Jenkins and Siseko Ntondini.

That’s where the trouble began.

All three boats shot the weir seemingly simultaneously, but the latter struck McGregor and spun him out at the bottom, leaving the rest of A-batch to stream past as the pair struggled out of the reeds.

It is not the first time that the six-time World Marathon champion has been struck by, or had altercations with, Jenkins, and it was clear that McGregor was furious at the result.

“It is not the first time Len has done this to me, so I am pretty immune to it,” he said wryly.

“I was really disappointed to start like that, and it took a lot for Jasper to calm me down, but in the end we came off a lot better than we could have. It was always a tall order to catch up.”

McGregor was not joking.

In such a tough field the pedigree pair had to make up more than a minute and 16 places, when they were next spotted at Commercial Road Weir, to be in touching distance of the leading pair of Birkett and Kime.

At Commercial Road, Jenkins’s boat was trailing Birkett’s with Houston brothers, Andrew and Alan, in third.

Day one is one of the more technical days, with long portages abundant. It was always going to be tough for the two out-and-out paddlers, McGregor and Kime.

But their remarkable comeback started as early as the Campbell’s Farm portage.

Running up Pinetrees, team Birkett were still comfortable with a 45-second lead at this stage.

The Houstons had snapped up second place and, lo and behold, it was McGregor and Mocke in third, only 58 seconds behind. Jenkins and Ntondini, now in fifth after taking a wrong turn, suffered more misfortune when Jenkins missed his water bottle from his seconds.

Behind them was the athletic pair of Sbonelo Khwela and Banetsi Nkhoesa, who were expected to make up ground on the runs, but not too much because of Nkhoesa’s stabbing incident in December.

At Mission Rapid, nearing the end, Birkett and Kime had opened a massive 3:58 gap on nearest rivals McGregor and Mocke.

The pair had climbed 15 places on a day that was not necessarily going to be their strongest because of the portaging. Khwela and Nkhoesa made use of their strong running to sit seconds behind McGregor’s boat in the race for second place.

At the finish, there was little surprise when Birkett and Kime crossed in first.

However, after a day of irrepressible determination, McGregor and Mocke powered home just 3:37 behind the leaders.

Then, 39 seconds later, Khwela and Nkhoesa claimed third spot.

The women’s race was a one-sided affair as Anna Koziskova and Abby Solms clinched victory in 3:05:04, a full 14 minutes ahead of second-placed Cana Peek and Kyeta Purchase.

The women’s winners placed 25th overall, a remarkable feat considering they had to power through the lower men’s batches

After Day One’s 42km stage, Day Two begins at the Dusi Bridge in the Valley of 1 000 Hills today – 46 gruelling kilometres of racing await on this, the toughest day, until the finish on Inanda dam.