Tauranga's Mike Dawson has finished second in the extreme kayak world championship in Austria at the weekend.
The 22-year-old was just 0.68 seconds behind German Alexander Grimm, the K1 slalom gold medallist at last year's Beijing Olympics, in the final on the twisting Wellerbrucke river down the Otztal Valley.
Still feeling the effects of flu, which ruined his world championship slalom campaign last month, Dawson recovered from a shaky start and a paddle clash on a rock to finish in one minute 1.15 seconds, against various world and Olympic champions from 22 nations.
"Obviously I wanted first but just being on the podium is fantastic," Dawson said.
"I'm also really stoked for Alex - we've done slalom races together, but this is his first extreme race."
On a river rated as one of the most technically tricky in Europe, Dawson qualified in the top 48 paddlers, then had to battle through two rounds of head-to-head racing until just 12 paddlers were left. They joined the three top seeds from last year in the Super 15 final.
Dawson spent minutes on the start line visualising his run but started too far to the right on the first run, which may have cost him the overall crown. He reached the final three metre drop in the same time as Grimm but couldn't match the German's powerful final few strokes. Another German, Jakobus Stenglein, was third.
Dawson, in his sixth season of extreme racing, heads home via Uganda and another extreme event on the Upper Nile, arriving in New Zealand in November to contest the summer season.
