JOHANNESBURG – The accolades keep rolling in for rower Kirsten McCann, who is the latest South African sportsperson to be nominated for a major international award.
McCann is up for the highest accolade in her sport after she was nominated for World Rowing Female Crew of the Year gong.
Her nomination is well deserved after she became South Africa’s first world rowing champion in a singles boat in Sarasota, United States earlier this year.
She won the country’s fourth senior medal at the global showpiece when she won the women’s lightweight single sculls title in October.
McCann is also the first South African woman to win a medal at the Under-23 World Championships after finishing third in the lightweight single sculls in 2010.
In 2013 she became the World Student champion, before breaking new ground by winning the 2015 world lightweight double sculls bronze medal with Ursula Grobler.
McCann could follow in her mentor and the architect of the country’s rowing success, Roger Barrow’s footsteps to scoop a prize from the world body.
Barrow, who has distinguished himself as one of the country’s great sporting minds, won the World Rowing Coach of the Year award in 2016.
The award winners will be announced on December 8, and they will then be honoured on the same day at a gala dinner during the 2017 World Rowing Coaches Conference in London.
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