Months of near-daily training in the cold and dark on Lake Whakatipu paid off for Queenstown waka ama paddler Bryce Irving last month.
The 44-year-old civil engineer, who’s treasurer of the Whakatipu Waka Ama Club, scooped two gold medals at the world distance championship in Samoa in his masters over-40 age category.
His first was in a six-man crew with five North Island paddlers in the V6 24km race, then 48 hours later he blitzed the field to win the V1 16km singles race.
Irving, who originally took up the Pacific Islands-origin sport when in Fiji about 20 years ago, hadn’t qualified for the singles after finishing runner-up at the long-distance nationals in April.
However, the paddler who did qualify for the race fell ill and just before the six-man race told him, ‘‘I’m flying back to New Zealand, can you take my spot?’’
‘‘I said, ‘hell yes, mate’.’’
As he hadn’t planned racing the singles, Irving hadn’t trained in a rudderless canoe, used for the finals, for more than three months.
A nice part of his singles win, after which he was lifted off the water, is he beat a Brazilian who’d been ahead of him when he’d finished fourth in the same race at the last worlds in Mooloolaba, Australia, in 2019.
At that regatta he’d also qualified for the six-man crew, but pulled out as he wasn’t well.
Irving says it was also nice to have his wife Jacqui and two kids supporting him in Samoa.
He’s proud, too, of having brought kudos to the resort’s ‘‘tiny’’ waka ama club.
Rather than putting up his feet on his return, he then kayaked from Frankton Beach to Queenstown Bay for the winning team in this month’s Peak to Peak multisport race, which they’d also won last year.
Irving says he can’t sit idle — ‘‘if I don’t exercise I go a bit loopy’’.
