Oh, so close for veteran paddler

Paddling on the Mersey this week has brought mixed emotions for durable Palmerston North kayaker Anne Cairns.

This was the Mersey River in Tasmania; it was wildwater canoeing and Cairns was fourth in the sprint event, her best World Cup result in years of battling away.

"So I was happy in that sense, but I was also disappointed," she said. "I missed out on my first World Cup medal by 0.18sec."

A year ago she was seventh in the sprint in Italy, her previous career-best result.

She was also fifth in a World Cup classic race of 14 minutes duration, but Cairns mainly focuses on sprint races of about 1min 30sec length.

"They are something that work in my favour for my crossover into sprint flatwater kayaking."

In that sport, women race over 200 metres and 500 metres.

There are 20 nations competing at Tasmania on dam-controlled rivers in the World Cup, which runs for another week.

Cairns prepared for the Tasmania series with Palmerston North trainer Paul MacDermid while still working as a phlebotomist for MedlabCentral.

She hopes to be picked for the New Zealand flatwater canoeing team to Australia in February and for the Wildwater World Championships in Spain.

Cairns is a member of the New Zealand high-performance flatwater squad and raced in a flatwater selection regatta at Rotorua the day before she left for Tasmania.

"Ideally it would have been good not to have to chop and change between boats and paddles," she said. "But because the World Cups are out of Europe this year, we have to race when the dams are full. This made for a long season of winter training."

Earlier, Cairns and sister Bridget travelled to Japan as a five-year memorial trip for friend and former Palmerston North triathlete Simon Britten. They competed in the Sagishima triathlon, one Britten was to contest the year he died in 2004 from mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer.