CANI ran the World Police and Fire Games sprint kayak championships at Castlewellan Lake and the surf kayak championships at Portrush at the start of August. When CANI were approached over a year ago to run the events we knew they would be both challenging and rewarding. The events in particular the sprint event took a great deal of planning as there has never been a sprint kayak event of this scale held within N.I but with a great team of volunteers and officials the event came together and was a great success.
To ensure both events ran well CANI employed the services of experienced officials which included Anne Ferguson who race directed the sprint kayak event at the London Olympics and Trevor and Frances Wetherall who also worked at the Olympics, Paul Harrington, Andy McClelland and Andy McMurray who have all ran Irish and British surf kayak championships and have competed on the world stage. The officials were key to the event but the volunteers where equally as important and over both events we had 45 skilled volunteers identified by CANI and 60 volunteers from the WPFG team who all helped deliver a great event. The team of staff at both events did a great job and all ensured the athletes had a great time while running the event.
CANI worked directly with the sports delivery team at WPFG and here are a few words from Johnny Davis head of sports delivery “I am writing to simply say a massive Thank You to you all for your amazing efforts, energy, enthusiasm and professionalism in delivering 2013 WPFG. The ambition was to deliver the Friendliest Games ever and the WPFG Federation have now officially confirmed that Belfast now holds the title not only as The friendliest Games ever but also the Best Games ever. Without you none of this would have been possible and we, the Sports Delivery Team, are deeply indebted to you. I believe that there is now a recognition within the WPFG Federation , the Belfast WPFG Team and Government that without you the Games could not have taken place. They too should be deeply indebted to you. Can I please ask that you share this e-mail with each and every person who was involved with you in the delivery of your sport”.
Final congratulations to all of the N.I athletes who competed at the games and won medals. The athletes taking part spent time training for the event and in some cases learning to paddle a sprint kayak in a short time so thank you to the coaches who helped them along the way.
There are lots of pictures on the CANI facebook page and there are also some on the WPFG flickr page so if you missed the event have a look at the photos.
