N.Z. canoeists like their nerves on edge

Press, 30 September 1988, Page 15

N.Z. canoeists like their nerves on edge

By

TOM BRIDGMAN

of NZPA in Seoul With several Olympic gold medals between them, lan Ferguson and Paul MacDonald are still nervous as they contemplate the prospect of more today. “If I’m not nervous enough, I start trying to think more to get myself nervous — you’ve got to have your nerves on edge,” Ferguson said today. “I don’t want to feel too nervous now, I try and forget about it but later on when we’re about to race, we’re shooting up.” His partner feels the same. “I am a nervous person when it comes to racing, and my nervous energy I turn into positive energy,” MacDonald said. Today MacDonald, the world champion in the KI 500 metre event, will attempt to win the Olympic gold, the medal won four years ago at Los Angeles by Ferguson. Then 90 minutes later the pair defend their Olympic K2 500 m title. “Really, it’s going to be a big day tomorrow, a long hard day but I think we are on form,” said MacDonald last evening. “We’re certainly feeling good to this point and just have to do our thing on the day.” MacDonald said it will be both harder and easier today than it was in 1984 — harder because the opposition is stronger and

easier “in the sense we know what’s going on.” “Perhaps that makes it harder because it leaves the possibility we could relax because we know what we are doing,” he said. “We’ve learnt lessons over the years and as way back as 1982-83 we learnt where we made mistakes. “Every mistake we’ve learnt from and won’t make again. We’re not going to go out there and get stung by someone.” Ferguson said “lets hope there’s no more mistakes that we haven’t made.” MacDonald’s main competition in the KI 500 m will be Andreas Staehle, whom he beat at the world championships last year and again in the semi-final at this regatta, the Hungarian Zsolt Gyulay, who turned in the fastest semi-final time and the Soviet champion, Victor Poussev. In the K2 500 m the Hungarian Ferenc Csipes and his partner Attila Abraham will push the New Zealanders hard along with the East and West German pairings. At the Duisburg world championships in 1987 Csipes and Laszlo Fidel won the gold and MacDonald and Ferguson the silver. The K2 500 m race is a straight out exhausting sprint race with no time for error or tactics. “You haven’t got time to think in the 500 m,

you’re out and racing and it’s all over before you know what’s happened,” Ferguson said. The K2 1000 m final they contest tomorrow and where again the world champions appear strong possibilities for the gold medal, is a slightly different story. “It is a long distance — we try and take a bit of lead and hold on to it all the way down,” Ferguson said. "Other teams are going to be coming back at us. They’re going to be fighting like hell, especially down the last 250 m they’ll be giving it everything. “We’ve just got to try and hold them off whatever happens.” Both agreed the K2 1000 m will be the hardest of the three races. "Hardest not in getting the result but as in its going to hurt the most,” MacDonald said. One pair of strong rivals missing from the K2 1000 m will be the French pair, Philippe Boccara and Pascal Boucherit, second to MacDonald and Ferguson at the world championships in 1987. They were late for the start of the semi-final yesterday and disqualified. "They were one of the top four (in the race),” said Ferguson. “It’s a real shame they missed the race. They messed up ... it takes either a silver or a bronze out of their pocket — the gold is obviously ours.”