Claudia Bailey has made a bold entrance to the big league, making her first international senior podium with a bronze medal in the K4 500m at the Sprint Canoe World Cup in Poland.
The 2023 ADCO Sports Excellence Scholar paddled alongside teammates Kailey Harlen, Ally Clarke and Natalia Drobot to finish just behind Germany and Poland with a time of 1:33.05 — just 0.14 seconds off the second-placed host nation.
The Bachelor of Exercise and Sports Science student is no stranger to the world stage, having previously competed at the 2022, 2023 and 2024 Junior and U23 World Championships, where she took home a bunch of medals.
But this is her first senior medal.
“It feels amazing to finish the World Cup trip with my first senior medal,” she said.
“Our women’s squad has been really pushing each other on and off water the last few months and it’s so special to see all the hard work paying off.”
The four women had only been paddling together for six weeks at the Aussie training camp in Szolnok, Hungary in the lead-up to the World Cup.
“Being a brand-new crew we were not sure how we would go,” she said.
“We are all so young in the boat (one of the youngest K4 crews entered) and it is so exciting to see what the future will hold with a bit more training and experience together.
“To win a bronze medal was just the cherry on top.”
The World Cup marks the first international event of the Canoe Sprint 2025 calendar and the first time Team Australia has had a chance to size up their competition.
“Being in Australia we were unsure how we would compare to the other countries, so we wanted to go into the competition focussing on our process and seeing what we could achieve,” she said.
Bailey will now look forward to the U23 World Championships in Portugal and the Open World Championships in Italy, which will be held later in the year.
She’ll be joined by fellow Bondies — sister Alyssa Bailey, 2025 ADCO Sports Excellence Scholar, Jasmine Rayward and 2024 Paris Olympian and silver medallist Pierre van der Westhuyzen.
“The plan is to continue training hard, pushing each other and seeing how far we can go. Podiuming at the World Cup has added more hunger to try and top our performances for the World Championships,” she said.