Ella achieves top 10 finish

Cook Islands Olympic salmon canoeist Ella Nicholas edged out younger sister Jane to make the final of the Oceania Championships in an International Canoe Federation ICF ranking race in Sydney at the weekend.

Cook Islands Olympic salmon canoeist Ella Nicholas edged out younger sister Jane to make the final of the Oceania Championships in an International Canoe Federation ICF ranking race in Sydney at the weekend.

Laying down a reasonably error-free run on the semis course put Nicholas in fifth place with the top 10 progressing to the final.

Her younger sister Jane, competing for New Zealand, was sitting on the bubble finishing 11th to miss a final spot by just over one second.

The race consisting of all top ranked Australians as well as paddlers from New Zealand, Japan, Germany and Slovakia, was eventually won by London 2012 silver medallist Jessica Fox.

Cook Islands Olympian Nicholas made a couple of small errors in the final to finish the race ninth.

Although her final wasn’t as crisp as she would have liked she said after the race she was pretty happy with her semis run and a top 10 finish overall.