2010 WUC Canoe Sprint Update: First Finals: World Level Class Competition

Medal podium K2 Men 1,000m

POZNAN – A strong wind has cleaned a little bit Poznan’s sky for the second day of the 4^th World University Canoe Sprint Championship. At the agenda of this second day, eight finals were disputed in the morning while the afternoon events were dedicated to heats and semi-finals.

Although the public had stayed unfortunately in its bed for those morning finals, the show given by the athletes has been from a very high quality. Take the C2 1,000 meters winners for instance, Lazar Dinitrescu and Victor Mihalachi: they were crowned also last week during the World Championship and have remained in Poznan between both competitions. Dimitresci and Mihalachi are undoubtly the best in the world and the Hungarian brothers Safran as second could only see the back of the Romanian duo during the whole the race.

Take also the Romanian C4 that has won the 1,000m competition today: Gheoca, Simmion, Comanici, and Bogdan were silver medallists last week in the World Championship. Hungary and Poland (2^nd and 3^rd) did know that gold was only a wish.

Besides this Romanian top class team, Poland has lived a glorious half an hour: after the win of the Serbian Tomasevic in K1 1,000 meters (he finished 5^th in the ICF World Championship last week), the home team has won 3 finals in a role.

Ewelina Wodnawroska , 5^th in K2 1,000m last week during the last world Championship, opened the festival with her gold in K1 500m followed a few minutes later by her teammate Thomas Kaszor in C1 1,000 meters (the Polish guy finished 7^th last week). As 5^th in the World Championship, Mariusz Kujawlski had to lead his new team mate (for the week) Marcin Nickowski to the victory in K2 1,000m.

Let’s go then to the two other finals of the morning which were a real thriller. Nine hundreds of second have separated the winner of the K4 1,000 meters men, Belarus with Miadzvedev, Liakioska, Bialko Rybauv from the Romanian four that counted in its rank two finalists of the last ICF World Championships. And what about the final of the women K4 500 meters? Only 36 hundreds have separated the three first. The Czech winners Doktorova, Matouskova, Adamova and Sebestova emerged in the last meters in front of Hungary and Poland.

As told at the beginning, the level of these competitions is quite high and although it is also difficult to compare two competitions because of the different wind conditions, the fact that some of the races went faster or nearly as fast as last week gives a good indication of the quality of this morning events.

(Source: Marc VANDENPLAS, FISU Summer Universiade Director)

 Medal podium K1 Men 1,000m

Medal podium K1 Women 500m

MEDALS

K1 Men 1,000m

 K1 Women 500m

 K2 Men 1,000m

You can find the results of every race on the OC website at www.fisucanoesprint2010.poznan.pl/home/results.