Louisa Sawers admitted she stuck to her tactics and they were spot on as she claimed gold in the women’s K1 5000m at the Canoe Sprint World Championships in Moscow.
Sawers, who made her Olympic debut at London 2012, finishing 11th in the K2 500m and fifth in the K4 500m, executed the perfect race in the K1 5000m to win her first world title.
The 26-year-old finished seventh as part of Britain’s women’s K4 500m earlier but conserved her energy throughout the 5000m, powering down the final straight and out sprinting her rivals.
Sawers clocked 23:10.957 minutes to win by over four seconds on Maryna Litvinchuk of Belarus in second and revealed the extent of her race plan in the non-Olympic event in Moscow afterwards.
“My main plan was to get out hard because I knew the first couple of kilometres were going to be really quick, then the next thing was to keep out of danger,” said Sawers.
“It worked well and at the end I just aimed for the line, like I do in training where we do last minute efforts. I told myself this was the last chance so go for it and it came together.”
Elsewhere Rebi Simon finished fifth in the women’s K1 1000m final in a new British record time of 3:53.550 while there are plenty of British hopes on Sunday too.
Olympic champion Ed McKeever won his K1 200m semi-final while London 2012 bronze medallists Liam Heath and Jon Schofield were second in theirs in the K2 200m.
And the new partnership of Jess Walker and Angela Hannah, bronze medallists at last month’s European Championships, followed suit in their semi-finals of the women’s event.
© Sportsbeat 2014