Stafford and Stone Canoe Club

The club's initial success followed on from the West Midlands Centre of Excellence based at Stone between 1978 and 1982. Richard Fox became 5 times World Champion and Liz Sharman took the World Crown on two occasions. Numerous other World Individual and Team medals were also gained by paddlers in this group.
From the 1990's Stafford and Stone has excelled in the development of home grown paddlers. A significant number of talented juniors have progressed to represent Great Britain at Junior, under-23 and Senior World and European Championships. Many International medals have been won.
Seven past or present club members have competed at the Olympics including Laura Blakeman at Sydney 2000 and Lizzie Neave at London 2012. Both learnt to paddle with Stafford and Stone from an early age.
The club continues to attract new young paddlers. 2013 and 2014 have been particularly successful building on the Olympic legacy and the local interest generated by Lizzie's inclusion in Team GB.
Although selected to represent Great Britain in 2014, Lizzie had to withdraw from competition due to injury but is now back in full training. Joe Clarke is the undisputed No.1 in GB Men's Kayak. A very exciting development is the new pairing of Stafford and Stone's Mark Proctor with Olympic Gold medallist Etienne Stott in Canadian Doubles. Adam Burgess, competing in both Canadian Singles and Canadian Doubles, Tom Brady and Mikey Wilson, both Men's Kayak, have all competed for GB this year. The focus for these, and other club paddlers, are the 2015 World Championships, to be held on the Olympic course in London, and towards Rio 2016.
Women's Canadian Singles is a relatively new discipline in the sport, Jazz Royle took a superb 7th place at the World Championships in Deep Creek, USA. This category will debut in the Olympics at Tokyo 2020.
Austin Barker, Chris Bowers and Rob Harratt competed for GB Juniors and Paul Sunderland took 4th place for Team GB at the Youth Olympics at Nanjing in China.
In 2014, 102 club members competed at National Canoe Slalom ranking competitions, in 5 seperate ability divisions, which take place across the country.
Stafford and Stone have claimed the National Interclub Title in 22 out of 29 Championships. In 2011 a new clubhouse in Westbridge Park, Stone was completed. Each year, Stafford and Stone Canoe Club organise 8 races days at Stone and 2 race days at Holme Pierrepont, Nottingham.

Sponsors for 2017

Manorshop Trentham -

http://www.manorshop.com/manorshop-trentham/

Aviva Community Fund -

https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/project/view/16-1176