The Legacy Begins …

A Fantastic Day at Lee Valley WWC

The Sharks Wild Water Racing Legacy has begun, a day of white water activity, introducing new people to the discipline, providing training for those with more experience and a chance to race. This is just the beginning …

A bright sunny day, always helps making a canoeing event just that little bit nicer, and although it is March and a bit nippy, the weather helped deliver a great day.

The finale to the day was the ranking Regional race, which is reported here.

What is the Legacy?

The Legacy is The Sharks helping to build and grow the discipline of Wild Water Racing, to give people of all ages the chance to try paddling on white water, to experience different boats and to have the opportunity to Race Wild Water. This is not a one off event, it is just the beginning, the next one will be on Saturday October 3rd, put it in your diary now!

We also want to give experienced paddlers, the chance to practice, train and race on challenging course, without having to travel huge distances. The race day is designed to attract some of the Countries top paddlers (four paddlers who have won medals at World Championships raced on the day).

We want to give people the chance to excel, to have fun, to practice, train and learn, so that they can enjoy our sport.

It is in conjunction with running Regional Wild Water Race, so that people can get a great experience and then show what they have learnt and test their abilities against some of the best paddlers.

It happens to be run on what is called the Legacy Loop at the iconic Olympic White Water Centre, built for the 2012 Olympic Games held in London.

Picture by Pat Thorn

On The Day

We had all standards of paddlers from beginners to World Champions, that in itself says a lot, we truly welcome the support from those International and top flight paddlers who came along and raced, but also shared their skills and knowledge with developing paddlers. Wild Water Racing is a great community and it is this community spirit which makes it such a great sport to be involved in.

  • Pictures by Pat Thorn

Paddlers new to the disciplines were introduced to white water paddling and the venue by Giles Brunning, our lead teacher and coach at Thamesmead, and it was good to see so many of our new paddlers from Thamesmead there. They started on the lower stretches of the course in more stable craft, and has the day went on gradually started higher up. This element was a fantastic way to get people involved who were completely new to the discipline and it is so successful it is something we are going to develop further at future events.

Your Feedback Please

We are looking to host another event on Saturday, October 3rd 2026 as part of the Legacy, please contact us either by using the feed form here, or by emailing: canoeing@thesharks.org.uk, so far suggestions are:

Specific Sessions

Specific session for each ability, having a beginners session, for people who are new to the discipline. The advantages of this is that there will be a concentrated effort on development and it will reduce congestion for the experienced paddler doing complete runs.

Whilst this is going on on the lower part of the course we could do some white water training for intermediate paddlers on the upper section (making efficient use of water hire time)

Having specific sessions, will also enable us to have different arrival times at the site, enabling less queueing and quicker booking in times.

A complete runs only session

Canoe Sessions

A specific time for Canoe development, both C2 and C1 to get more people to try different boats.

Beginners Race

A short race on the lower section for those new to the sport, this will be a non-ranking race top encourage people new to racing to experience a race.

Team Event

If we do this we would suggest, each team has an experienced paddler, a beginner and some intermediate paddler, or similar combinations.

Coaching Qualifications

Helping Clubs to get experience and qualifications to develop the discipline

Timings

We have been told we have the water from 8am to 10am (it is unavailable between from 10am till 2pm) and any time after 2pm (we can timetable in a break, which the LV would then hire out for public use)

We need your thoughts, please let us know, click here for survey or email: canoeing@thesharks.org.uk.

Wavehoppers in action

  • Pictures by Pat Thorn

Welcome to the Dark Side

One of the major achievements of the day was attracting clubs from other disciplines to try something different, a full list of the 20 clubs attending:

Thank You

To everybody who made this event possible

To the Bankside Rescue Crew

Our Timekeepers and Admin Crew

Paddle UK

pictures Pat Thorn

For their ongoing support, not just with hosting this event, but in many aspects of what The Sharks strive to achieve.

Wild Water Racing Committee

For helping and supporting our event and for managing the discipline.

The Staff at the Lee Valley White Water Centre

For enabling us to run the event

Coaches, parents and paddlers

Without whom their would be no discipline and no event, we truly appreciate the effort people put in to take part in events, to help paddlers achieve their goals.

Our Team

Aaron Nolan

Coaching and bank support on the day, Aaron is a member of our management team, who coaches and races for The Sharks.

And he fixes things.

Alistair Smorfit

Alistair is our finance guru on our management team, on the day he was providing technical support and compiling results as well as staffing Control.

Giles Brunning

Giles is our lead person and coach at Thamesmead, on the day he was our lead safety officer and was seen coaching all of those new to white water canoeing.

Grant Underwood

Grant was the driving force behind this project, he is our lead on communications on our management team. On the day he was coaching and providing a shuttle for random paddlers that want to go down in a double.

Joanna Lechocka

Joanna provides logistics and admin on the management team, she is the person who makes the mad ideas happen. On the day she provided admin, marshalling and time keeping.

Malcolm Blowers

Providing on the water rescue throughout the day.

Neal Underwood

Neal is a member of our management team and was providing Bankside safety and timekeeping on the day.

Rick Moore

Rick is our lead slalom coach and on the day he was providing Bankside safety

Sam Masters

Sam was providing Bankside safety for the event.

Sybille Marchese

Sybille was part of our control team and one of our time keepers

Also

Thanks to Pat Thorn, and Tom Canfield for taking pictures throughout the day, there are a lot more to be processed and shared, if you have any pictures or videos from the day, please either share them on the event WhatsApp group, or email them to: canoeing@thesharks.org.uk.

This event was run by The Sharks, London’s premier Wild Water racing Club, it was underwritten By The Sharks Sports Group Community Interest Company.

For a full list of our partners, please click here.

Published Monday March 16th