Camps Bay High School's Holly Smith and Fish Hoek High School's Georgia Singe made history by securing South Africa's first gold medal at this year's canoeing world championships.

Seventeen-year-olds Holly Smith and Georgia Singe partnered and plotted their way to victory in a race that lit up the ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships in Vejen, Denmark, on 2 September. In a nail-biting final lap, competing against Spain, Hungary and Great Britain, Smith and Singe prevailed through good teamwork and strategic mastery.

The duo's resilience and determination to take control of the race during the portage section of the last lap of the marathon bagged them the gold medal. Smith explains that the plan was to "go out hard and hopefully be in the front bunch and stay there for the duration of the race".

"When the Hungarians broke away, it seemed there was a group of three teams fighting for two medals; so we were hoping we wouldn't get fourth place.

"We just carried on grinding and slowly caught the Hungarians' wake. Our main goal was to run as hard as we could during the last portage, and we managed to break away and secure the win. We couldn't believe it! We weren't expecting the win," says Smith.

Though the marathon is a triumph, Singe wishes the duo could have trained harder for the K2 junior women...