On the day that Asturias recovered the descent from the Sella, the Spanish male K-4 made up of Saúl Craviotto, Marcus Cooper Walz, Carlos Arévalo and Rodrigo Germade won the gold medal in Canada this Saturday in the 500-meter test in the Olympic sprint mode.
In the final, played on the third day of the World Canoeing Championship, at Banook Lake in Halifax, the place where ice hockey was born, the Spanish paddlers beat the German boat by just four tenths, he snatched gold from Spain at the 2019 World Cups and at the Tokyo Olympics.
With the result of this Saturday, however, the change in trend that world canoeing is going through is confirmed, since the national team, slowed down under the Teutonic shadow during the last five years, had already won gold in the Race World Cup ( Czech Republic) last May.
So, Germany was fourth, just behind Ukraine and Lithuania.
THEY ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS!
@Saul_Craviotto, @Areval00, @MarcusCooperW and @RGermade's K4 is crowned the best boat on the planet.
BRAVE!
💙 #CanoESP pic.twitter.com/7X9suphYDW
– CanoeingSpain (@RFEPiraguismo) August 6, 2022
In Halifax, the Canadian city with the largest port in Atlantic waters, where average temperatures in August do not reach 20 degrees, Craviotto, Cooper, Germade and Arévalo have imposed themselves with authority on Germany, second, but also on Ukraine , third, and Slovakia, fourth.
The rest of the finalists, far from the Spanish boat, have been, in order: Canada, France, Portugal, Poland and the Czech Republic.
double success
Minutes after the gold in the K-4, the couple formed by Cayetano García and Pablo Martínez have done the same in the C-2 modality, also in 500 meters, a test that will be Olympic in Paris 2024. “We are in the most high, this is what we dreamed of in every training session”, García said as soon as he touched down, just before hugging an exhausted and visibly emotional Martínez, to tears.
🙃💙🥺 pic.twitter.com/9AwLgnwLWL
– CanoeingSpain (@RFEPiraguismo) August 6, 2022
The Spanish duo, fourth in the last 250 meters of the race, took the lead in the final sprint, the last 80 meters, and was no longer overtaken, crossing the finish line half a second ahead of the next boat.
The Polish pair —Wiktor Glazunow and Tomasx Barniak— was second and the Chinese pair —Hao Liu and Bowen Ji—, third.
In the women's K-2 200, a test excluded from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Teresa Portela and Sara Ouzande have hung the silver medal after finishing their final test behind the Hungarian couple —Blanka Kiss and Anna Lucz— and just ahead of the local duo, formed by Andreanne Langlois and Toshka Hrebacka.
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