Castlebar’s great outdoors

BRIDGE THE GAP SLALOM KAYAKING AT LOUGH LANNAGH Irish Kayak Olympian Hannah Craig was on hand to launch the new Slalom Course at Lough Lannagh Castlebar and to run the ‘Bridge The Gap’ Women in Paddle Sports.

Mayo is set to benefit from an initiative aimed at getting more woman involved in paddle sports


Feature
Oisín McGovern

MAYO has the potential to become a centre of excellence for water sports.
That view could not have been made clearer by those who spoke to The Mayo News about the county’s ‘world class’ water sports infrastructure at a recent event in GMIT Castlebar.
Earlier this month members of Canoeing Ireland — the national body that promotes the sport —paid a visit to the west to conduct a series of workshops and events in the Castlebar area.
These events included the launch of a new canoe slalom course at Lough Lannagh.
Irish Kayak Olympian Hannah Craig was on hand to deliver a masterclass to over 30 female canoeists as part of ‘Bridge The Gap’, an initiative aimed at getting more woman involved in paddle sports.
The 2012 Olympic Games finalist also lent her expertise to young paddlers for a junior kayaking event in Lough Lannagh before delivering a workshop in GMIT alongside professional canoer Jenny Egan and World Cup medallist John Simmons.
Located in the heart of the Wild Atlantic Way, and bejewelled with some of the finest rivers and lakes in the country, it is little surprise that these paddle enthusiasts chose to come to Mayo to promote and grow their sport.
According to Hannah, who represented Ireland at many World Championships in Slalom Kayaking, Mayo is a county with ‘huge resources’ and a diversity of different water environments.
She sees GMIT’s outdoor education department and the Castlebar and Ballina Adventure Hubs as invaluable assets in realising the county’s potential for paddle sports.
The pandemic, she says, has been ‘transforming’ for the awareness and popularity of outdoor experiences in her own area, and indeed, all over the country.
“People are understanding the resource that is on their doorstep,” she told The Mayo News.
“I think, for paddle sports, there’s this massive opportunity to create a pathway for people, from these one-off or casual experiences, that this is something I can be doing every day of the year if I want to, with the correct equipment and the correct training around it.”

‘Huge opportunity’
PART of the appeal of paddle sports is that it contains 14 different disciplines.
These range from Craig’s chosen discipline of slalom kayak to other forms like sea kayaking and canoe sprint.
Professional sprint canoeist Jenny Egan says that Mayo has the resources and infrastructure to facilitate all these disciplines, for elite and recreational paddlers alike.
“With the new sports hub in Castlebar, there’s huge opportunity,” says the Canoe World Cup silver medallist, and sole athlete member of Sport Ireland’s ‘Women in Sport’ steering committee.
“You have so many natural resources, so many great rivers, lakes, seas, so you could be doing all different types of canoeing. You could be doing flat water, canoe sprint, canoe marathon, surf skiing, sea kayaking, slalom, freestyle, so there’s massive opportunity there to continue to develop.”

Participation
KEY to realising these lofty ambitions is having enough qualified instructors in place.
According to Castlebar Adventure Hub co-ordinator, Jarlath McHale, the absence of one person can often be the difference in a session or event going ahead or not.
“I see it on a regular basis with particular clubs. If one person doesn’t turn up to manage it then the whole session is cancelled. There might be 20 people relying on that one person to turn up,” he says.
While GMIT produces a regular flow of outdoor education graduates, Canoeing Ireland is aiming to recruit a full-time employee in the Mayo region grow and develop the sport.
With the assistance of Mayo Sports Partnership and the various Adventure Hubs, Jenny Egan says canoeing can become ‘very popular’ in the county.
“Football is so big and may and there’s no reason why canoeing can’t become a sport that’s very popular in Mayo, especially with the surroundings, the rivers, the lakes. They just need just need to continue to have a good structure and coaching involved in the area to bring people on in in this sport.”
Pauline Jordan, a lecturer at GMIT’s outdoor education centre, describes Jenny Egan and Hannah Craig as ‘fantastic role models’ and says Ireland has the produce more such elite athlete.
“One thing you don't have a shortage of in the West of Ireland is water,” she remarked.
“We have success in other sports in Ireland, so there's no reason we could have more success in water sports because our resources are world class.”