The old and the new will be facing off at the 2026 Berg River Canoe Marathon with a pair of young guns muscling in as the marginal favourites at one of South Africa’s most gruelling sporting events.

The 240km, four-day race from Paarl to Velddrif on 15-18 July, is about as tough a test of skill, fitness, stamina and old-fashioned “vasbyt” as you can find in a sporting context, and not normally associated with young up-and-coming talent. However, two under-23s have been making a name for themselves in the 2026 Western Cape river racing season and Neriyah Dill and Joshua Glyn-Cuthbert will go into the race as the paddlers to beat in the women’s and men’s races respectively.

The pair have both enjoyed a perfect build up to the 2026 event with each claiming four-wins from the four “pre-Berg” races in June, winning their respective categories in the Paarl to Skooltjie event on June 6, and following that with victories over the next three weekends at Gouda to Bridgetown, Hermon to Gouda and finally Wellington to Hermon on June 27.

Four wins over four weekends over the first half of the four-day epic, means the pair will be bristling with confidence when they line up in Paarl on Wednesday July 15, but it also means they have the clichéd target on their backs.

Stellenbosch student Glyn-Cuthbert’s biggest concern – besides his relative inexperience – is most likely to be 2024 champion Thomas Lovemore. A tough multi-day stage race such as the Berg tends to favour experience and Lovemore knows what it takes to win day after day.

14-time race winner and defending champion Hank McGregor has not entered, which opens up the men’s race, but there are rumours coming out of KZN that the wily 48-year-old will be on the start line via a late entry. If that happens, he becomes favourite and most people expect the rest to be in a race for second.

Dill, with a second and a third-place finish in 2024 and 2025, is widely expected to complete her hat-trick of podium finishes in the women’s race, and, barring a mishap, it is likely she will finally get a chance to enjoy the top step.

While still under 23, Dill has paid her dues with two solid finishes in the last two years and was far from disgraced as she was beaten by two national team members in Jenna Nisbett and Nix Birkett 12 months ago.

She flirted with top-ten finishes overall in her first three events and finally claimed a top-ten in the Wellington to Hermon race, adding credence to the fact she is peaking at the right time.

A paddler who will be missed is “Oom Jannie” Malherbe who last year broke the record when he finished his 52nd Berg River Canoe Marathon. He was the three-time race winner in 1963, 64 and 65.

However, three paddlers who are expected to be on the start line with a remarkable 125 finishes between them are Gerhard Beukes (42 finishes), Ralph Teulings (42) and Rene Boehm (41). Paddlers will set off from Paarl at 09:00 on July 15 and finish the stage 62km downstream at Zonquasdrift near Gouda. Day 2 is a tricky 46km to the headwaters of the Misverstand Dam at Bridgetown, followed by the gruelling 75km haul to Zoutkloof. The event then ends with a 57km grind into the finish at Velddrif.

The race record is 13:20:09 set in 2008 by Hank McGregor.