On a mission to win more medals, the Russian Rafting Federation sent teams to make a return to Tara Canyon to compete in the Tara Cup 2021. The stunning Tara Canyon forms 36kms of the border between Montenegro and Republika Srpska in Bosnia & Herzegovina. It was here that the 2009 IRF World Rafting Championship Downriver discipline races were held.

Earlier this month, the Tara Cup saw teams from Bosnia, Latvia, Serbia and Russia meet and compete in glorious sunshine. All the teams had just finished competing in the IRF World Cup 2021: Banja Luka so were in competition mode already. This section of the river at this time of the year is a Grade 2/3/3+ (higher in bigger flows) and is surrounded by steep canyon walls, many of which are tree covered or fully exposed rockface.

Republika Srpska local team, RK Dajak Klub were the favoured team to win the competition having trained and raced on this section many many times over the years. This race was a gruelling almost one hour long downriver race. Nine minutes was the difference from first to last team.

The determination for first place was so strong that even after all this distance and time, the difference between first and second place was only six seconds. This was achieved by a last minute extra push for the finish line which meant that Odyssey-Azimut-Tomsk was able to beat RK Dajak Klub. Third place was the mixed Russian team just under two minutes later, followed 22 seconds later by Team Vir from Serbia.

Another couple of medals for Russian teams and they are back into training. It’s no wonder Russian teams are regularly on the podium in raft race events.

See the full Tara Cup 2021 results here.