Great Britain's team for the Poznań world championships: ten sprinters and a paracanoe heavyweight
- Published
- 2026-08-05T12:40:37+00:00
Great Britain's team for the Poznań world championships: ten sprinters, one A final and a paracanoe heavyweight
Paddle UK named its team for the 2026 ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships in Poznań (26–30 August) on 29 July. Ten athletes go in canoe sprint, thirteen in paracanoe — and the split between those two numbers tells you most of what you need to know about where British medals come from.
The selection is unusually easy to audit. Alongside the team sheet the International Panel published its reasoning, including the exact placings that earned three athletes their nomination. So rather than guess at the thinking, we can check it against the season's results.
The sprint entries, event by event
| Event | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| K-1 200 m | — | Amy Green |
| K-1 500 m | — | Lucy Lee-Smith* |
| K-1 1000 m | Daniel Johnson | Lucy Lee-Smith |
| K-1 5000 m | James Russell | — |
| K-4 500 m | — | Emily Lewis, Zoe Clark, Deborah Kerr, Kristina Armstrong |
| C-1 200 m | — | Bethany Gill |
| C-1 500 m | Thomas Lambert | Bethany Gill* |
| C-1 1000 m | Thomas Lambert* | — |
*Entered under the policy's discretion clause, which lets an already-selected athlete be added to an event that would otherwise go unfilled.
Three men, seven women. No men's crew boat at all — no K-2, no K-4, no C-2 — and no British entry in the men's 200 m or 500 m kayak. Britain's only multi-event athletes are Lee-Smith, Gill and Lambert, each doubling up under the same discretion clause. The women's K-4 is the flagship, and the panel protected it: "due to scheduling and prioritising performance, no athletes named in the K4 will be doubling up."
The K-4 that finished two hundredths behind Poland
The four of Lewis, Clark, Kerr and Armstrong is the boat Paddle UK singles out, and the season justifies it — but only just, and only at the end.
The crew opened with two B-final wins. At the Szeged World Cup in May they took the B final in 1:32.69, tenth overall. A week later in Brandenburg, with Lee-Smith in for Armstrong, they again won the B final (1:36.36) — tenth overall again. At the European championships in Montemor-o-Velho a third combination, Lewis–Armstrong–Kerr–Lee-Smith, went out in the semifinal, fifth in 1:33.89.
Then Montreal in July, back to the original four: third in the semifinal (1:36.13, 0.53 s down) and sixth in the A final in 1:35.94. China won in 1:34.02 from Spain (+0.95) and Germany (+1.41), with Hungary fourth (+1.44) — and Poland fifth in 1:35.92, 0.02 s ahead of the British boat.
Two hundredths of a second is the whole story of this crew's summer. It is also the reason the panel refused to let any of the four double up in Poznań: on that evidence the K-4 is Britain's only realistic route into a senior A final, and it needs four fresh paddlers on the start line.
Amy Green, 0.09 s from a world title
Amy Green, born in 2004, is Great Britain's only canoe sprint medallist of the 2026 international season. At the junior and U23 world championships in Halifax she took silver in the U23 women's K-1 200 m in 0:41.40 — beaten by Canada's Besharah by 0.09 s, with Ukraine third a further 0.03 s back and Poland's Dominika Zimnoch fifth. Four paddlers inside 0.27 s.
Her senior season reads as a first full campaign rather than a breakthrough: seventh in the B final over 200 m at the Szeged World Cup (0:41.66), then a sixth place in the U23 A final at the European junior and U23 championships in Szeged in July. The panel's note is measured: she "performed well at World Cup 1 and has backed up her performances during the U23 World and European Championship."
Poznań gives her the senior 200 m on her own, with no crew-boat duty. In a first senior world championship, an A final would be a genuine result.
The selection document says the quiet part out loud
British selection statements publish numbers, and this one is worth reading next to the results.
"Both Dan Johnson (11) and James Russell (9) were close to the self selection criteria," the panel writes — and both figures check out. Daniel Johnson finished second in the Montreal B final over 1000 m in 3:45.72, eleventh overall; earlier he had been fourth in the European B final (3:32.16). James Russell was ninth in the 5000 m A final at the European championships in 22:06.60, having been sixteenth in the same event in Szeged five weeks earlier.
Lucy Lee-Smith, the panel notes, "finished 15th in the 1000m in Montreal and is progressing well," which earns her the 1000 m and a discretionary double into the 500 m. Her own long-distance outing at the Europeans — seventeenth in the 5000 m — puts the scale of the task in context.
The same transparency applies at the bottom of the sheet. Bethany Gill doubles from the C-1 200 m into the 500 m; Thomas Lambert, "progressing well in the 500m throughout the season," doubles into the 1000 m. Every athlete had to confirm their place by 4pm on 31 July, and a 48-hour appeals window opened on publication.
Deborah Kerr: Britain's best senior result, and only one boat
The most interesting line on the sheet is the one that is not there.
Deborah Kerr produced Great Britain's strongest senior placing of 2026: fourth in the K-1 500 m at the European championships in 1:49.71, behind Germany's Pauline Jagsch, Poland's Anna Puławska (+0.84) and Hungary's Zsóka Csikós (+0.86), and 1.69 s off the podium. She was also an A finalist over 200 m twice — eighth in Szeged (0:40.06, 1.05 s off the win) and ninth in Montreal — and she won the Brandenburg B final.
In Poznań she races the K-4 and nothing else. That is the no-doubling rule applied consistently rather than an oversight, and it is a defensible call: the four needs her. But it does mean Britain's most competitive senior single-kayak paddler of the season will not contest a single boat at the world championships.
Bethany Gill offers the mirror image. Her best result of the year came over the non-Olympic distance — fourth in the women's C-1 5000 m at the Europeans in 27:19.80, 13.26 s behind Hungary's Csorba and 10.4 s off bronze — and she added second place at the European marathon championships in Piteşti. In Poznań she goes back to the 200 and 500 m, where her season best was fifth in the Montreal B final.
Where Britain actually wins: the paracanoe team
The paracanoe squad is twice the size and several classes stronger. Thirteen athletes travel: Charlotte Henshaw MBE, Emma Wiggs MBE, Hope Gordon, Lindsay Thorpe, Saffron Cresswell, Jon Tarrant, Jonny Young, Dave Phillipson, Tom Price, Stuart Wood, Jack Eyers, Ed Clifton and Xander Van Der Poll.
Between them they hold two reigning Paralympic titles — Henshaw and Wiggs — three Paris 2024 silver medals, won by Gordon, Phillipson and Eyers, and a Tokyo 2020 bronze from Wood. Paddle UK describes the group as combining "Paralympic champions, Paralympic medallists and exciting emerging talent," and the selection reasoning shows the same points-driven logic as the sprint side, with athletes "tracking well against PQS" — the Paralympic qualification standard — kept in the frame.
That asymmetry is not new, and it is not an accident of one season. It is the shape of the British programme: a paracanoe squad competing for gold, and a sprint squad competing for finals.
What to expect in Poznań
Set expectations by the clock. Britain's sprint team enters the world championships with exactly one senior A final from the entire 2026 international season — the women's K-4 in Montreal — plus two A finals from Kerr in the 200 m and one from Gill over 5000 m, a distance not on the Olympic programme.
A world championship field is deeper than a July World Cup, because the crews that skipped Montreal come back. In the women's K-4 the Montreal podium sat at 1:35.44; the British boat went 1:35.94. That is close enough to keep an A final realistic and far enough that a medal would be a genuine upset.
The individual targets are clearer: an A final for Green over 200 m, a semifinal-to-B-final trajectory for Johnson over 1000 m, and a top-ten placing for Russell in the 5000 m, where he has already been ninth in Europe this year. On the paracanoe side the calculation is entirely different — Henshaw and Wiggs arrive as champions, and Britain will expect to leave Poznań with medals.
Poznań also opens the qualification pathway to the 2028 Paralympic and Olympic Games in Los Angeles, which raises the stakes on every placing. For a team this small, ranking points may end up mattering more than the finishing positions themselves.
Frequently asked questions
Who is in Great Britain's canoe sprint team for the 2026 world championships?
Ten athletes: Amy Green, Lucy Lee-Smith, Emily Lewis, Zoe Clark, Deborah Kerr, Kristina Armstrong, Beth Gill, Dan Johnson, James Russell and Tom Lambert.
Who is in the British paracanoe team for Poznań?
Thirteen athletes: Charlotte Henshaw, Emma Wiggs, Hope Gordon, Lindsay Thorpe, Saffron Cresswell, Jon Tarrant, Jonny Young, Dave Phillipson, Tom Price, Stuart Wood, Jack Eyers, Ed Clifton and Xander Van Der Poll.
When and where are the championships?
At the Malta regatta course in Poznań, Poland, from 26 to 30 August 2026. Canoe sprint and paracanoe run as one combined championship across the same five days.
What is Great Britain's strongest boat?
The women's K-4 500 m of Lewis, Clark, Kerr and Armstrong, which finished sixth in the A final at the Montreal World Cup in 1:35.94 — 1.92 s behind China and 0.02 s behind Poland.
Has any British sprinter won a medal in 2026?
Yes, one: Amy Green took silver in the U23 women's K-1 200 m at the junior and U23 world championships in Halifax, 0.09 s behind the winner.
Why is Deborah Kerr only racing the K-4?
The selection panel ruled that no athlete named in the K-4 would double up, citing scheduling and performance priorities — even though Kerr was fourth in the K-1 500 m at the European championships.
Do these championships count towards Olympic and Paralympic qualification?
Yes. Poznań forms part of the qualification pathway to Los Angeles 2028, and points earned there carry the heaviest weighting of the season.
Racing on the Malta course begins on 26 August. Great Britain's sprint hopes rest on the women's four of Emily Lewis, Zoe Clark, Deborah Kerr and Kristina Armstrong, a boat that spent the summer two hundredths of a second from Poland, and on Amy Green in her first senior world championship. The paracanoe squad, led by two reigning Paralympic champions, arrives expecting to contend for titles. Every heat and final is tracked on the championship page.
Read next: Australia's team for Poznań — twelve sprinters arriving with six World Cup medals between them.
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