Egan finishes fifth in World Championships

Daire Walsh

Following a commendable effort in Bascov, Romania earlier today, Lucan kayaker Jenny Egan achieved a fifth place finish in the K1 Women Seniors 26.2km final at the 2021 ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships.

A silver medalist at the ICF Senior World Championships just under two weeks ago, Egan was expected to challenge strongly for a similar result in her latest appearance at a major championship.

She produced another strong performance in the Romanian commune and found herself amongst the chasing pack for the vast majority of the race.

In the end, she crossed the finishing line in an impressive time of two hours, five minutes and 34 seconds.

This placed her just over 20 seconds behind the eventual winner – Vanda Kiszli of Hungary.

However, she was marginally shy of securing a podium place in the end. Kiszli’s fellow Hungarian Zsofia Voros took silver, while Great Britain’s Lizzie Broughton won a bronze medal with a time of two hours, five minutes and 18 seconds.

Spain’s Eva Barrios came home in fourth, less than a second ahead of Egan.

This shows just how tight a race it was with GB’s Samantha Clark marginally adrift of her Irish counterpart in sixth.

In the third lap of the race – there were seven in total – Egan was in seventh place, but gradually worked her way up the ladder.

By the time the sixth lap had come around, she was up to fourth on the leaderboard and a mere two seconds off a medal.

First place did change hands on a couple of occasions (Voros took over from her compatriot Kiszli during the seventh lap), but there wasn’t to be a dramatic shift in the closing stages of a gripping contest.

Meanwhile, Egan’s brother Peter was due to compete in the K1 Men Seniors 29.8km race a short while after her own event had finished. However, he was ultimately marked as ‘DNS’ in the final standings.