A brief History
Royal Leamington Spa Canoe Club has had a long tradition on Sprint Canoeing this dates back to the start of the club were Tony Sowman represented the Great Britain in Kayak in the 1970s. The kayak was the one of many disciplines at the club, through the 70s and 80s and early 90s with regular members of the club gaining international honours (Neil Mclockland, Clive Jones, Mat Sowman, Daryl Morgan, Stuart West, James Smythe, Martin Prestage).
The kayak sprint racing distances are 200m 500m 1000m and 10,000m but this event was dropped for the 200m event in at the world championships (Copenhagen 1993), these can be raced in K1 (single Kayak), K2 (double Kayak) or K4 (quadruple Kayak). The Club had one single blade paddler through this time Tibor Herbent, he started to coach C1 after racing it for some years. In 1990 the club had its first Canoe honours at the Junior Worlds at Nottingham since then the club has continued to produce international Canoe Paddlers (Renny Thomas, Tom Love, Karl Yurkwich, Malcom Lane, JoJo Love, Ian Man, John Warwick, Lee Watson) The Canoe is also raced over the same distances as the Kayak and also in C1, C2 and C4. The main difference between Canoe and Kayak apart from using a single blade in canoe, is men currently only paddle Canoe internationally.