Canoeing takes center stage at Lake St. Mary’s

Santa Maria Lake, divided between the municipalities of Revine Lago and Tarzo in the province of Treviso, is preparing to host the Veneto regional speed canoe championships on the Olympic distances of 200 and 500 meters.

There will be more than two hundred athletes in the water on Sunday, June 10, to compete for the title in the various categories, from the youngest to the masters from some twenty clubs from Veneto, including paracanoe specialists. The races are scheduled from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and selections are planned, limited to the cadet and cadet categories, to form the representative team from Veneto that will participate in the Coni Trophy scheduled for the second half of September in Rimini. The canoeists will thus return to populate the lake, which had already hosted them in the past and was identified in the 1980s as a possible center for high-level agonism, thanks to the organization of the San Donà and Mestre Canoe Clubs, the Circolo Nautico of Bardolino and the Peschiera Rowing Association, which together intended to promote the event.

“This is a clear example of collaboration,” stresses Bruno Panziera, president of the Veneto Regional Committee of Fick, the Italian Canoe Kayakayk Federation, “with the aim of making Lake Santa Maria a reference point for canoeing not only in Veneto considering its ideal characteristics for Olympic canoeing. This is a valuable collaboration that we have also found in the mayors and administrations of Revine Lago and Tarzo, who have evidently understood our good will and our efforts to promote not only the sport of canoeing, which is well suited to the environmental heritage of the two municipalities, but the entire territory.”

“Our two lakes, the one in Santa Maria where the regional championships are scheduled and the larger one in Lago, in fact offer the optimal conditions,” stresses Professor Michela Coan, mayor of Revine Lago, “to practice canoeing at all levels from competitive to amateur, and we hope that the June 10 races can become a classic event for the valley of the lakes.”

“Ours is an area,” comments the mayor of Tarzo, architect Vincenzo Sacchet, “with a high landscape and environmental value that we intend and try to enhance with initiatives capable of attracting an increasing number of visitors. And also in this sense the sport of canoeing is an added value, especially if we manage to realize even more than one event in the sign of a sport that sees young people in the foreground.”