Northern Beaches gun Jo Brigden-Jones shows top early form at world kayaking ahead of K4 quest
Australian kayaking veteran Jo Brigden-Jones has shown top early form before her main event at the world championships in Hungary.
Manly
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Australian team veteran Jo-Brigden Jones has been around in kayaking longer than all her teammates but still has big goals to achieve.
An immediate one is making it onto the Australian Olympic team to paddle at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
On Thursday the Northern Beaches paddler showed she has the form to go all the way to Japan with a strong performance in the K2 200 at the ICF world championships in Szeged, Hungary.
London Olympian Brigden-Jones and partner Jamie Roberts from Western Australia paddled their way into the semi-final of the event and while it is a non-Olympic class, her form bodes well for her upcoming K4 campaign.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work in the K4, so the K2 has definitely taken a bit of a back seat and we haven’t done that many training sessions in it,” Brigden-Jones said.
Brigden Jones is competing at her eighth world championships for Australia with her main focus helping to qualify Australia a K4 spot in Tokyo.
“I’m really looking forward to the K4 500m race. The racing is going to be super tough as Olympic qualification is on the line and every country will be paddling super fast to try and earn those qualification spots,’’ she said.
“We have spent the last five weeks in Italy working on every aspect of our race. But we have now been a crew for the past two seasons so we have developed great trust within the boat for each other.
“We are confident if we replicate what we have been doing in training, we will perform well on race day.”
Brigden-Jones, who is in the bow, will paddle with Alyssa Bull, Roberts and Alyce Burnett in the K4.
The most eagerly sought after quotas are the men’s and women’s K4 500.
Finishing in the top 10 and meeting the continental criteria will open up opportunities for countries to spread their four athletes over K2 and K1 events.