Roberts and Bird Selected for World Championships

Published On: 7 June 2018

WA sprint canoe athletes Jaime Roberts and Stephen Bird have earned official selection for the Australian representative team to contest this year’s World Championships in Portugal.

The 2018 ICF Sprint World Championships will be held from August 23-26 in the town of Montemor o Velho near Portugal’s mid-West coast.

Roberts will compete in the women’s K4 500m squad for Australia with Bird set to tackle the men’s K1 200m event.

Head coach Jimmy Owens said the national squad had shown improvement in the past year with a clear focus towards Tokyo 2020 now developing.

“I think the team has really stepped up over the last twelve months in terms of its positioning on the podium and the A finals.Coming away from the World Cups we will now reset and reboot in terms of where we need to get to for Worlds and that’s very important for our direction towards Tokyo 2020,” he said.

World Championships selection is a boon for Roberts, who relocated from Perth to the national training centre on the Gold Coast last year and has shown excellent form with the Australian K4 squad, which was highlighted by a World Cup medal in Hungary last month.

Bird returns to top level international competition for the first time since the Rio Olympics in 2016. In Brazil, Bird made the Olympic final in an impressive showing and at his most recent World Cup venture in Germany, he raced the A-final of the 200m sprint showing signs that he is nearing top form.