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Curtis McGrath will return to the scene of an awkward but triumphant prelude to his first Paralympic gold medal when he leads Australia’s top paddlers to the Para-Canoe World Championships in Germany starting on August 23.
Seven Australians will contest the championships where they’ll chase personal goals and try to secure national quota spots for the Paris 2024 Paralympics.
“The World Championships is always a big deal, but especially this year with all the best nations, all the best athletes, vying for those quota spots,” McGrath said.
“The cut-off is top six and each athlete in our team will be out to secure one of them.”
The team includes Susan Seipel, the three-time world champion and dual Paralympic medallist, and Dylan Littlehales, who has competed at two Paralympics and recently stayed and trained with McGrath on the Gold Coast.
“Those two have been through it before,” McGrath said. “Then we’ve got Kathleen O’Kelly-Kennedy, Amy Ralph, Mark Daniels and Ben Sainsbury all vying for their first Paralympic spot in the paddle.
“It’s nice to have some fresh faces. I think it’s a really good balance of a team.”
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7 Aussies will contest the #ParaCanoe World Championships in Germany, where they’ll chase personal goals and try to secure national quota spots for the #Paris2024 #Paralympics.
— AUS Paralympic Team (@AUSParalympics) August 16, 2023
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The venue, Duisburg in western Germany, is a favourite of McGrath’s. In 2014, about two years after he acquired his impairment while on military service in Afghanistan, he won his first world championship, in Moscow, in the Va’a outrigger canoe.
However, when it was announced that the Rio Paralympics would feature only kayak events, not outrigger events, McGrath turned his attention towards the K. At the 2015 World Championships in Milan he won the VL2 again and claimed silver in the kayak, KL2.
A year later, at Duisburg, McGrath won both events, beating six-time world champion Markus Swoboda of Austria in the KL2, a feat he repeated a few months later at Rio 2016 to win the first of his three Paralympic gold medals.
“I love racing at Duisburg,” McGrath said. “It’s where I won my first world championship in the kayak.
“I actually fell out in that regatta, the only time I’ve fallen out in a competition. So that was an interesting challenge and dent in my ego and preparation.
“Having the experience now, having gone through it all and understanding the balancing and the start gate process and everything, it’s exciting and I’m really looking forward to it.”
The team will train at the AIS’ European Training Centre in Italy before travelling to Germany. Once quota spots are determined, the athletes will push their claims for inclusion in the Paris 2024 team at the national championships next year.
By: David Sygall, Paralympics Australia
Posted: 16 August 2023
