Solomon sisters knock opposition out the water

The Capetonian Solomon sisters, Hanna and Skye, were a regular feature on the winner’s podium at the South Africa Sprint Canoe Championships at Roodeplaat Dam, Gauteng, from 4 to 6 April. They won a combined total of nine golds and four silvers over a range of distances from 200m to 5 000m.

Hanna, 13, bagged four golds and three silvers, while Skye, 10, secured five golds and one silver.

Skye also achieved success a couple of weeks earlier, when she won the Western Province Show Jumping Championship with her horse, Noble Bandit.

Hanna, meanwhile, has been selected for the South African team to compete at the 2025 Olympic Hopes Canoe Sprint in Račice in the Czech Republic.

This competition will mark Hanna’s debut for the South African team, and her first time competing overseas. “I was happy to be selected,” she says. “I didn’t think we were going to make the team because there were so many Under-18s and Under-16s. My friend and I qualified for the doubles. We’re excited to go to the Czech Republic. I’m going to try and have lots of fun.”

Hanna, who started paddling in 2021, went with the Bamboo Warehouse racing team to compete at the South Africa Sprints in April. “A lot of the girls were in the best boat you can get, a Nelo. Most of the time, kids get a Nelo boat a lot later, so my friend and I were nervous, but we decided not to let it scare us. We knew we could paddle faster than them in our boats, so we didn’t let their Nelos make us less confident. We just put it aside and went out to race.”

Hanna puts her progress in canoeing over four years down to going through the ranks and getting stronger. “When you’re under 12, you paddle in a small, stable, quite slow canoe called a guppy. This stage is always really fun. Then you advance to the K1 canoes, which are a lot more unstable. You start going faster and faster, and also get a lot stronger naturally.”

Hanna trains with the Orka Paddles squad on the water where she lives. “In the morning at 05:45, I get on the water, and I just paddle with the squad,” she says.

Skye says having a sister to canoe with is a good support system. “Hanna helps me when I train,” she says. They both went to Herzlia School up to last year, and now do their schooling online.

Skye balances her time between canoeing, show jumping, and school by riding Noble Bandit in the mornings, canoeing in the afternoons, and doing schoolwork in between.

Skye’s love for horses stems from when she started riding ponies. “I was obsessed with horses from then on,” she says. “I was fortunate enough to lease a pony called Spice Girl, and that’s how I learnt to jump.”

Hanna says she enjoys canoeing as everyone is nice and you can trust them. “My friends and I trust each other with our lives,” she says. “Canoeing is also a fun sport and really casual when you’re off the water. I just love it.”

Hanna, who also does lifesaving work in Fish Hoek, says quite a lot of people her age canoe. “At the South Africa Sprints, about 20-something people in our age group came.”

Canoeing, which started out as an organised sport in the second half of the 19th century, runs in the Solomon family. Hanna and Skye’s parents met each other through canoeing. Their dad has won two Berg River Canoe Marathons, four-day odysseys of 240km in the Cape winter from Paarl to Velddrif on the West Coast. He was the inspiration for Hanna to get into paddling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Canoeing competitions are always in Joburg,” Hanna says. “But now that they’ve changed the rules to qualify for the Olympics, athletes have to do qualifiers on two different continents. So, they’re going to have competitions on Roodeplaat Dam for the next four years coming up to the Olympics because I think the Europeans are going to come to South Africa as their second continent.”

Hanna hopes to compete in the Olympics one day. “I would like the Olympics to add the 5k [5 000m] with five or four portages [running and carrying the boat],” she says. “Every single kilometre, you get out your boat and run with it. But they don’t have those races in the Olympics at the moment.”