The Club de Mar technician is aiming for a good place in next year’s championships in Portugal

Gisele Corte has only been a Club de Mar canoe technician for two years, but she could have been one all her life because she feels that canoeing is an irreplaceable part of her life. Next year she aspires to be part of the team that will compete in the World Sea Kayaking Championships in Portugal, together with other athletes from the club such as Elena Reolid, María del Mar Ramón and Pablo Alonso.

Gisele, who is now 35 years old, has been preparing specifically for next summer’s World Championships in Portugal for five months: “My goal is to gain one more kilometre per hour. It’s a lot, given that I now sail at around 11 kilometres per hour, but not impossible”. To be able to compete in the world championships, she has to be in the top five of the national ranking in this speciality, and that’s where she stands.

The world sea kayak championships are held over a distance that alternates between 25 and 30 kilometres, always paddling downwind of the wind and waves. It may seem very similar to the track events, but paddling a sea kayak is quite different from paddling a track canoe, as Gisele explains: “The paddling technique is the same in good conditions, but it is very different when the weather gets complicated, so you have to learn to break the wave and read the wind and the sea”.

Gisele started paddling at the age of 12 in her hometown club in La Plata, Argentina, and has managed to be runner-up in the South American K-4 500, as well as winning several individual national titles in her home country.

Seven years ago she arrived in Palma and jumped into the Parc de la Mar as soon as she saw canoes there. It was his first opportunity to continue with this sport on the island, and she didn’t miss it. After training for the Balearic federation, the coach of the canoeing section of the Club de Mar, Ginés Cerdán, was quick to sign her up to reinforce the club’s section.

After a lifetime competing on the track, it was in Mallorca where Gisele decided to try sea kayaking and there she has already established herself among the best in the world in a discipline that has become the real star of the canoeing section of the Club de Mar. The team came sixth in the National Sea Kayaking League, in which more than fifty clubs compete, and came second in the National League in the Senior Ladies category, as well as coming second in the Balearic Islands League.

Gisele already has great experience in sea kayaking competition and won the Spanish Cup in Barcelona in the K2 with veteran Donatella Monteleone in 2016. She had already finished second with the same teammate in Dénia.

The coach of the canoeing section of the Club de Mar predicts that the team has an emerging generation in which good results will be seen in a short time: “they are people who have been training for 4 or 5 years and in the next few years the leap in quality will be evident”.