Max Brown is off to the Olympics
Last week Max Brown and his team mate, Kurtis Imrie, were selected to race the men’s K2 1000m boat for the Tokyo Olympics – the first New Zealand canoe sprint paddlers to earn selection for Tokyo.
It is a far cry from when Max, aged 15, joined a couple of mates down on the Whanganui River to try out kayaking. He says, “I was the slowest and not the most talented but I kept at it, even in the winter when it was very cold.”
In his last year of high school, Max then 17, competed in his first New Zealand kayaking championship as part of a team and in 2013 he was selected to represent New Zealand in the World Championships in Vancouver, Canada and has been representing the country ever since.
In 2014 Max went to Wellington to study for a Bachelor of Music and over the three years didn’t stop training twice a day. He says, “I didn’t make the K1 singles. I was not fast enough but I linked up with Curtis while in Wellington for the K2.”
In 2019 the duo placed 8th in the K2 1000m. A Final in the World Cup in Poland and later that year were joint 6th in the B Final in Hungary before qualifying a New Zealand boat for the Tokyo Olympics via the 2020 Oceania Championships in Sydney.
In the New Zealand trials for the Olympics in 2020, they competed against six other partnerships and won. However, with the postponement of the Olympics and then to redo the trials and now, finally, they have achieved selection.
Max admits, “It has been a stressful time for Curtis and I. We are positive about the Olympics taking place. It would be hard to train properly if we didn’t believe that. We had our vaccines on Tuesday.”
Max and Curtis will be New Zealand’s first men’s K2 1000m representatives since the 2012 London Olympics. Hopefully they can emulate Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald who won silver in the K2 1000m at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Max says, “I’m absolutely stoked to have been selected. As a young kid I would never have dreamed I would be good enough to challenge at this level. I was very lucky to have grown up in Whanganui close to the river.”
Proud parents, Peter and Jenny, went up to Lake Karapiro for the announcement of Max and Curtis’ selection as they will not be able to go to Tokyo to see them compete.
River City Press 29/4/21