After relinquishing their title at the Prescient Freedom Paddle last year, the confident pair of Mack McGregor and Josh Fell will team up again to try and retain their crown on Freedom Day, 27 April.
The Freedom Paddle was dominated by McGregor and Fenn who won back-to-back titles in 2020 and 2021 while McGregor won the second edition of the race in 2019 with Andy Birkett. With three titles, Euro Steel’s McGregor is the races’ most decorated men’s winner.
“This just seems like the race we do together,” McGregor said about his partnership with Fenn. “We are good mates and paddle well together, so we find it easy to team up for this race.”
Heading into this week’s event, McGregor is in the process of preparing for the Molokai surfski race in Hawaii and sees the Freedom Paddle as a good preparation event for his trip in a few weeks’ time.
“I’m going to be using the Freedom Paddle as a training paddle for Molokai and I haven’t tapered off for this week or anything.
“We are coming off a big training block going into this week and it’s going to be part of the next phase of preparation for Molokai, which is going to be a massive race with the best of the best coming from all over the world.”
In recent years the benign conditions have forced paddlers into a flat-water battle for the title, but McGregor has been constantly checking the weather and as things stands, he feels they might be in for something different in 2023.
“In the last few years, the most exciting thing has been a ship sailing across your path of cutting the island too fine!” he joked.
“This year it seems like things could be quite different. Looking at the weather predictions we have a potential head wind going out to the island and then a downwind back.
“It looks like we could be in for some exciting conditions that will really test our surfski skills which will make for a great race,” the veteran added.
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