MARK ETHERIDGE: Lovemore’s paddling passion taking him places

France, Croatia, China… Hamish Lovemore’s passion for paddling is taking him places!

In the space of two months, he would have taken part in the Olympic Games in Paris, the marathon world championships in Metković and the inaugural Super Cup in Hangzhou.

A marathon specialist by nature, Lovemore and seasoned partner Andy Birkett reached the semifinals of the K2 canoe event in Paris and Lovemore won the B Final in the first Olympics since 2016 in which SA had representation in the canoeing code.

The 25-year-old carried his form over to the marathon world champs where he won silver in the short track event over 3.4km — one of five silver medals won by the SA contingent.

And now it’s off to China for the first Super Cup competition which will wrap up a whirlwind two months for the man from Umhloti, north of Durban.

Despite the Olympics always being in the back of his mind, Lovemore says he grabbed at the opportunity.

“When Olympic slots opened up after African champs, I phoned Andy [Birkett] and said we may as well may go for the sprint trial if we’re already doing marathon training together. so we went to Paris for 10 days and at the same time finished off our training block for world championships!”

He says winning the K1 1,000m B final and reaching the K2 quarterfinals (500m) with Birkett, where they came fourth, were two of the best days of his young life.

“Racing doubles with Andy was as good as me winning the B Final, especially after being knocked out in the Hungary leg of the World Cup in the first heat — to turn that around was something special.

“A lot of people don’t grasp the huge difference between racing over 30km which takes about 2hr and then having to face a race that is over in something like 90sec!”

He also found it hard to deal with the attention heaped on him when he got back from Paris and wanted to focus on marathon world champs, saying he was rather swamped.

“It was absolutely crazy… when I got back to SA there were 150 messages on my phone and so many requests for interviews etc. I went on a hunting trip to Dundee soon after I got back —just needed to switch off, it all got so much and then I was straight back into marathon training.”

And he admits to rather liking the sprint format.

“I’m actually quite excited to carry on sprinting… I really enjoyed it, and it helped for the marathon as well, so I’d like to do a full sprint season.”

Canoeing truly runs through the Lovemore family’s veins. Dad Bruce was very active in the likes of the Dusi and Fish River Marathons, older brother Tom (who now lives in Knysna) made world champs in 2015 and is a previous Berg River marathon winner and sister Charlotte also paddled a fair bit.

Making his recent successes more noteworthy is that he only started paddling at the age of 15, inspired by brother Tom’s success.

Growing up, like so many other South African paddlers, the legendary Hank McGregor was one of Lovemore’s inspirations and he says it’s largely due to the likes of McGregor and Birkett that SA paddling is in such a good space right now.

“I used to train with Hank’s group since I was 16… a lot of guys go to Europe but having Hank and Andy right here in SA shows that we can beat the best from here… you don’t necessarily have to go to Europe all the time for training camps.

“Hank and Andy are both multiple world champions so we have the best on our doorstep.”

Lovemore is also rapidly reaching that level, already having tasted World Championships success by winning at U23 level three years ago.”

Paddling’s definitely not for sissies with Lovemore describing what a really tough week of base-training at the beginning of the year looked like.

“Our toughest week was one where we did 240km of paddling, 20km of running and then three gym sessions of an hour each — it all amounted to 25 hours of training.”

As such he’s eternally grateful that his Eurosteel sponsorship provides him with his river boats, a monthly financial allowance and race bonuses. He also recently received a nutritional supplement sponsorship from Swedish company Maurten.

To date he hasn’t had many scary moments on the water, touchwood and his biggest injury setback was on terra firma in this year’s Dusi Marathon.

“I fell during a portage and sliced my leg open on a rock — doctors had to sew the muscles back onto the side of my shin and I needed about 20 stitches.

“It was just four weeks before Olympic trials in Germiston but in hindsight it was quite funny though, one competitor was posting on social media that Andy [Birkett] was going to need a new partner for the trials!”

History tells us now that Lovemore proved any doubting Thomas’ wrong and that in the world of paddling there’s a whole lot more to come from this young man!