SANZ

Dene Simpson, is joining a group of paddlers who will be kayaking from Leigh to Great Barrier Island on 30 October 2010, to raise funds for the Child Cancer Foundation. This is an open water crossing of 62km, which may take as much as 12 hours to complete. This particular trip was chosen to symbolise the journey of endurance which children with cancer in New Zealand undertake – these children collectively undergo an astounding 75 000 treatments and procedures each year! Hence the goal of the Kayak for Cancer challenge is to raise $75 000 to match these procedures.

Dene’s proudest moment was meeting Nelson Mandela when she represented SA at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Dene started kayaking in 1984, purely by chance, when she ran into a friend on the street in Johannesburg who invited her to a slide show about whitewater kayaking and the rest, as they say, is history! By the early 90s, Dene was winning numerous paddle races of all descriptions, including flat water sprints and marathons, whitewater races and river races, both short and ultradistance e.g. in 1991, she won the SA Sprint Championships, and the SA River Championships on the Lowveld Croc, as well as the Berg River (240km), the Breede River (70km) and the Fish River (82km) marathons. All of these wins meant that she was “in the right place at the right time” to concentrate on sprints for Olympic selection and Barcelona, where she reached the semi-finals of the K1 and K2 500m. She finished her South African paddling career at the 1994 World Marathon Championships in Amsterdam and then six months later was off on her next adventure, sailing around the world!

Dene and her husband Butch, a top South African rock climber and mountaineer in his day, and owner of Varsity Sports in Cape Town, left Cape Town on a 43ft yacht and spent six years sailing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In 2001, they settled in New Zealand, where Dene has continued to test her limits and demonstrate her skills on the water. In her first few years in NZ, she decided to give triathlons a go, and was chosen to represent NZ in her age group at the World Champs in Queenstown in 2003. She says “I was as proud to wear black and white as I had been to wear green and gold…that’s just how it was, very special”. After this, the competitive paddling bug bit again, and she has in recent years had impressive achievements, including wins in the Whanganui (60km) and Rangitaiki (42km) river races. Surfski paddling (ocean racing) is now her main interest, and this year she was a close second in the King of the Harbour, a downwind race from the Viaduct to Waiheke Island, and later won the 44km Trans Taupo race, finishing 10^th overall. At 54 (and that’s her age, not a race distance!), she’s still doing well against much younger paddlers.

Dene is an inspiration to us all, but even more inspiring are the children and their families bravely going through their cancer journey. To read more about the Kayak for Child Cancer event and the work of the Child Cancer Foundation, please go to

www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/kayakforchildcancer/

Dene and the other top NZ paddlers in this event all encourage you to consider making a donation to this worthy cause.