Sports
Fourth MCF marathon season race
By MM Sports
Nov 15, 2006, 15:49

The 4th meeting in the Malta Canoe Federation 'Free Way Surf Shop' Marathon Season was held on Sunday 12th November. The weather for the occasion was certainly not ideal with an annoying Force 2/3 wind hitting from NE. Nonetheless a very good number of paddlers turned out for the event. This time round the number of laps around Manoel Island went up to 3. Paddlers were split in a number of categories with the more advanced athletes (Division 1) going for the 3 laps while beginners to
the sport (Division 3) competed in a 1 lap race. Three cadet paddlers, Luca Pace, Matthew Schembri and Kyle Cauchi, competed in the youth category. Moreover for the first time in this season three K2 (doubles kayaks) participated in the 3 lap race as a category on their own.
Finally Craig Wightman and 12 year old Holly Anderson paddled the 3 laps of Manoel Island in a C2 Canadian Canoe.

Nine novice paddlers started the race first with no handicap, follwed 6:30min after by another seven paddlers. More and more paddlers started off with different handicap times until the last three paddlers Alex Rizzo, Julian Mamo (18min later) and Gerarld deGaetano (19min later)
took off. The competition in the different categories was intense even on the first lap. In the youth category there was very close competition between Matthew Schembri and Kyle Cauchi with a difference in favour of Kyle Cauchi for the first lap of only 10seconds. More experienced cadet
Luca Pace was however in the lead with a time for the first lap of 18min 20sec. He eventually finished first in the youth category with a time of 58min51sec.

In the doubles category (K2) Joe Borg together with Peter Borg Costanzi got the lead in the first lap with duo Dorian Vassallo and Nicki Valenzia close on their heels. The other less experienced K2 duo Clive Zammit and Karen Cacciattolo did loose about 6 minutes in the first
lap.

The gap between the first two K2s was of 2min in the second lap. This went up to 4min by the end of the third lap thus enabling the duo composed of Joe Borg and Peter Borg Costanzi to win the K2 category with a time of 49min15sec.

Division 3 category paddlers were in the mean time competing in the one lap race. The winner in the male category was Damian Schembri with a time of 20min23sec for the lap following by Dennis Briffa with a time of
25min52sec. In the female category paddler Kler Azzopardi took the lead with a time of 23min02sec. She was followed closely followed by Michelle Caruana (23'36"), Nathalie Debono (24'37"), Simone Ellul (25'30") and Yvette Farrugia (31'58").

Some great competition was on offer in the Division 1 category with elite paddlers Gerarld deGaetano, Julian Mamo and Alex Rizzo competiting for the winning post. During the first lap deGaetano recovered the one
minute handicap on Mamo and Rizzo. They cruised very close to each other through the Manoel Island tunnel. Gerarld deGaetano kept on pushing hard for the rest of the race proving to be too hard to beat for both Julian Mamo and Alex Rizzo. On the other hand Mamo and Rizzo
ignited the competition against each other for the rest of the race.

Finally it was Julian Mamo who succeeded in finished before Alex Rizzo, beating him for only 2 seconds. The rest of the group in this category followed this trio with Anton Pace finishing in the 4th position followed by Robert Pullicino and Peter Zammit. In the female category
of Division 1 paddler Nicki Borg Costanzi finished first with a time of 57min15sec followed in second position by the less experiences Debbie Caruana Dingli with a time of 1hr12min11sec.C2 paddlers Craig Wightman and Holly Anderson finished the race in 1hr30min54sec.

The 4th meeting of the season saw an increase in both male and especially female participation in the races. The MCF is looking forward at a greater particiption in the 5th appointment this year which will be held on the 26th of November (4 Laps) and would like to congratulate all
paddlers participating in these races. More information is available from our website at www.maltacanoefederation.org
.


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