Join The Sharks Sprint Racing Team

Sprint Racing is an Olympic discipline and The Sharks have a small but active Sprint section which we ant to grow in 2016. We train at Southall Activity Centre (SAC) although we plan to have other sessions during the Simmer months (April to September); There will be regular sessions at Osterley Park, hopefully in Hayes; we will keep you posted.

Races take place over 200m and 500m in a straight line in fast racing boats, there are some longer races at 1,000m and sometimes 3k or 5k. Sprint racing is a very competitive sport; there are 5 National Regattas each year at Nottingham and they take place at The National Water Sports Centre at Holme Peirrepont. This is a giant rectangular lake which is marked out in lanes and you race from your starting block to the finish line as fast as you can.

There are a number of regional and local events each year; last year Shark paddlers raced at Marlow as well as Nottingham, in the past we have raced at the London Regatta Centre; Royal Canoe Club events as well.

in 2016 we intend to have paddlers at the National events in Nottingham; the first local event we intend to go to is: Wey Sprint event on Saturday 19th March; we also hope to have some Sprint races at Osterley Park on 2016. All events are on our Calendar page: http://www.thesharks.org.uk/calendar/. When you race in Sprint events you must wear club colours, which are available from The Sharks and can be personalised with your name on the back. We do have a few that can be borrowed at events.

On order to boost our Sprint Section, we re looking for somebody to help with co-ordination and planning, you do not need any teaching or coaching experience; this is to support the coaches and help make preparations for events.

The current coaches for Sprint and Marathon are Neal Underwood and Rod Grundy.

Winter training times are:

Wednesday evening at 5pm at SAC; these are indoor sessions and we use paddling machines

Saturday afternoon at SAC at 3pm; these are water based sessions; unless the weather is extremely bad in which case they will be indoors.

SAC (Southall Activity Centre) is located on Longboat Row, Cranleigh Gardens, Southall, UB1 2BE

Visit the Sprint Racing Website.