A rising star in Para-canoe, Dylan Littlehales made his Australian team debut as a diminutive 15-year-old, hitting international waters for the first time at the 2015 ICF Canoe Sprint and Para-canoe World Championships in Milan, Italy. Although he was the youngest competitor by three years and the youngest in his classification by five, Dylan raced strongly to record a top eight result in the B final of the men’s 200m KL3.
First introduced to Para-canoe by his uncle Mike Druce, the coach of the Australian canoe slalom team, who told him Para-canoe had been added to the program for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Dylan leapt at the opportunity to represent his country and quickly set about learning the ropes.
Through hard work and raw talent, it did not take the Kariong local long to prove to selectors he was worthy of his place on the 2016 Australian Paralympic Team. …
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A rising star in Para-canoe, Dylan Littlehales made his Australian team debut as a diminutive 15-year-old, hitting international waters for the first time at the 2015 ICF Canoe Sprint and Para-canoe World Championships in Milan, Italy. Although he was the youngest competitor by three years and the youngest in his classification by five, Dylan raced strongly to record a top eight result in the B final of the men’s 200m KL3.
First introduced to Para-canoe by his uncle Mike Druce, the coach of the Australian canoe slalom team, who told him Para-canoe had been added to the program for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Dylan leapt at the opportunity to represent his country and quickly set about learning the ropes.
Through hard work and raw talent, it did not take the Kariong local long to prove to selectors he was worthy of his place on the 2016 Australian Paralympic Team. Training under David Birt and Paul Hutchinson, Dylan spent six days a week on the water and three days a week in the gym, modelling his style after the Australian able-bodied paddlers Lachlan Tame and Rob McIntyre.
Dylan not only achieved his goal of a Paralympic debut at Rio 2016, but placed sixth in his semi-final, finishing just 2.406 seconds behind the fastest qualifier and shaving more than a second off the time he clocked in his heat.
Since then, he has been in the form of his life. At the 2017 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Račice, Czech Republic, Dylan finished two steps from the podium in fifth place, before winning his first international medal, a bronze, at the 2018 ICF Canoe Sprint and Para-canoe World Cup in Szeged, Hungary. He won the inaugural Para-canoe Ashes trophy with the Australian team, and at the 2018 Canoe Sprint National Championships in Penrith, New South Wales, he pipped Paralympic gold medallist and reigning dual World champion Curtis McGrath on the line in the men’s 200m K1 open multiclass final.
At this rate, Dylan will almost certainly be among Australia’s top medal prospects come the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
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