Flat water speeds

I am curious about what average speeds the 'top guns' paddle on flat water with no tidal or wind input. I have never done any racing and have not trained with anyone outside of my own little paddling group so am not sure what others are doing.

On a good day I can possibly average 11km/hour over 10km on the flat. Over a number of flat paddles I probably average in the low 10's.

I see Sean Rice averaged 17km/hour on a great downwind afternoon in Perth during the week.

So if it was flat as a tack out what would Rice and Mocke being paddling at?

What are the top guys you paddle with averaging?

Most of the very good paddlers will average over 7 mph (11.3 km/h) on marathon flat-water races; the top flat-water paddlers (Greg Barton, Matt Streib, etc.) will average over 8.5 mph (13.8 km/h). Of course, things like current, water depth, turns, portages, etc. will all impact these numbers.

We just had a race in Western Australia called a Pairs Enduro where two paddlers work together washriding one another over 14km on flat water. The top two pairs (paddling K1's) averaged 13.9 and 14.02 km/hr. (the winning pair were actually sprint paddlers who are members of our institute of sport, Reece Baker and Stephen Bird).

So I would suggest the professional ski paddlers would be somewhere in the 14-15 bracket?

We race in 7 divisions in Marathon and to be in Division one, you need to be paddling around 12 plus.

As far as ski's go my partner Mark Lawson and I were the first ski pair averaging 13.2km/hr. (Mark was waiting for his K1 to return from World champs in the US)

I have found the top paddlers speed doesn't really change that much when they switch to ski's. I can average the same in my ski and K1 over these middle distances, but over longer distances I am much more comfortable in a K1.

This might also be of interest:
northcoastkayaks.com/2014/11/26/epic-sur...on-with-greg-barton/

(These are theoretical times for a flat 10km. To get speed in km/h just divide 600 by time in minutes.)

For comparison K1 5000 m world records:

Eirik Veras Larsen 2009 18:00 (16.67 km/h)
Bridgitte Hartley 2009 20:10 (14:88 km/h)

pretty impressive.