the day when Asturias recovered the descent of Sella, the Spanish men’s K-4 composed of Saúl Craviotto, Marcus Cooper Walz, Carlos Arévalo and Rodrigo Germade won the gold medal of the 500 meters Olympic sprint this Saturday in Canada. In the final, contested on the third day of the Canoe World Championships, at Lake Banook in Halifax, the birthplace of ice hockey, the Spanish paddlers beat the German boat by just four tenths, snatching gold from Spain at the 2019 World Cups and the Tokyo Olympics.

With this Saturday’s result, however, the change in trend that world canoeing is going through is confirmed, since the national team, slowed down under the Teutonic shadow for the past five years, had already won gold at the Racing World Cup (Czech Republic) last May. Thus, Germany was fourth, just behind Ukraine and Lithuania.

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 imposed themselves with authority on Germany, second, but also to Ukraine, third, and Slovakia, fourth. The rest of the finalists, far from the Spanish boat, were, in order: Canada, France, Portugal, Poland and the Czech Republic.

double hit

A few minutes after gold in K-4, the couple formed by Cayetano García and Pablo Martínez He did the same in the C-2 modality, also over 500 meters, a test that will be Olympic in Paris 2024. “We are at the top, that’s what we dreamed of in every training session,” said García right away. as he landed, just before embracing an exhausted and visibly emotional Martínez, in tears.

The Spanish duo, fourth in the last 250 meters of the race, took the lead in the final sprint, the last 80 meters, and were not overtaken again, crossing the finish line half a second ahead of the next boat. The Polish duo —Wiktor Glazunow and Tomasx Barniak— finished second and the Chinese duo —Hao Liu and Bowen Ji— third.

In the women’s K-2 200, an event excluded from the 2024 Paris Olympics, Teresa Portela and Sara Ouzande snagged the silver medal after finishing their last event 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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