The Science of Canoeing By Richard Cox

female, will never make a successful Olympic gymnast and a four feet high male will never make it to the top of
professional basketball.(l) In other words, there are certain physical characteristics, many of which are inherited,
that limit one's potential for achieving a high standard of attainment in certain sports. Such features are
sometimes used to select athletes for special training. This is especially true in certain eastern bloc countries,
where children have been selected at a very early age for advanced training.
So far as canoeing is concerned, the inherited structural characteristics that would appear significant to
performance are height, length of arms and physique. Also important but not necessarily predetermined are body
mass and body fat.
Height
Hirata's research (1977) suggested that successful sprint paddlers were slightly above average standing height
whilst Hahn's assessment (1989) of the highly successful Australian Marathon team at the 1988 World
Championships found wide variations in both height and weight. The extra height of the sprint paddlers,
however, was not generally found in the trunk region, where paddlers were found to have less than average
height. This phenomenon might be explained by the fact that additional "sitting height" would lead to greater
difficulties in balancing the canoe.
Longer arms (respective to other bodily dimensions and weight), on the other hand, provide greater leverage and
range over which the force can be applied during the paddling action.(2)
Table 9.2: Height Statistics of Male and Female Paddlers, 1976 and!980 Olympic Games
XXIst. Olympiad, Montreal, 1976 XXIInd. Olympiad, Moscow, 1980
Event Low High Mean Std. Event Low High Mean Std.
Dev.
Dev.
Women Women
K-l 500 156 178 170.3 5.82 K-l 500 162 176 168.9 4.37
K-l 500 153 178 169.0 5.41 K-l 500 162 176 168.3 3.84
Man Man
K-l 500 170 188 180.4 5.02 K-l 500 172 192 181.1 5.08
K-2 500 170 196 180.1 5.86 K-l 500 166 196 181.0 6.55
K-l 1000 164 189 180.2 6.23 K-l 1000 176 188 183.1 3.97
K-2 1000 168 196 180.1 6.85 K-l 1000 166 196 181.1 6.08
K-4 1000 151 191 181.3 6.20 K-l 1000 171 201 183.1 5.58
(From A. Toro, 1986)
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Weight or Body Mass
Hirata (1977) has shown that canoeing gold medal winners in Montreal were 3 to 10 kg heavier than the average
contestants. The explanation offered by Shepherd (1987) as to why Olympic champion canoeists should be
heavier than their fellow competitors is that the excess mass is attributable to lean tissue, rather than to fat and
that it contributed substantially to the individuals performance. Otherwise, as previously explained in Chapter
(1) Having long limbs would make it technically difficult to perform somersaults since the limbs extend
much further from the centre of gravity about which they would revolve. A short basketball player
would find it impossible to dunk the ball in the net, because he could never jump high enough.
(2) This assumes that all other bodily features are equal. A heavier paddkr with long arms, for example,
would not benefit from this feature because the extra leverage would be required to move the heavier load