2014 ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup in Szeged

Szeged – Hungary, May 26, 2014: Germany also impressed with six medals; Max Hoff (K1 Men 1000m) and Sebastian Brendel (C1 Men 1000m) each made it a trio of victories from this season’s three ICF Canoe Sprint World Cups.

Australia’s Murray Stewart managed to collect two medals from the morning’s action. The 27-year-old led the K1 Men 1000m race at the midway point, but was edged out over the final-third with a late burst of speed from Hoff proving decisive. Stewart held onto silver and compatriot Kenny Wallace picked up bronze.

Brendel collected his third consecutive C1 Men 1000m World Cup title by out sprinting local hero, Attila Vajda (HUN).

Later, Stewart joined forces with his countrymen (David Smith, Jacob Clear, Tate Smith) in the K4 Men 1000m; the London 2012 Olympic gold winning quartet looked comfortable and secured gold ahead of their Hungarian rivals, Serbia picked up the bronze.

“To come out and pull that sort of race off just goes to show how we can race when things come together.” K4 captain Tate Smith said.

Clear was equally pleased, “I think we really nailed our race plan and kept our composure and that gave us a really nice middle section and then we had some guts at the end,” he said.

Stewart admitted he was feeling it prior to the K4 final, “They [arms] were stinging a bit, but we train for that. Once I got in the four I didn’t really think about that,” Stewart said.

Danuta Kozák (HUN), the Olympic K1 Women 500m Champion added another gold to her collection in the first ‘A’ Final of the day. Greeted by a wall of sound from the packed grandstand as she approached the finish line the local favourite sped to victory ahead of Yvonne Schuring (AUT) and Teresa Portela (POR).

Great Britain secured victory in the K2 Women 500m. After qualifying two teams for the final it was the partnership of Lani Belcher and Rachel Cawthorn than managed to secure gold ahead of crews from Poland and Germany.

The pair competed well in their opening World Cup of the season in Racice a week ago, winning three medals between them, and today showed fine attacking form by leading the final from start to finish.

“We just changed our mindsets a little bit, and really hit the start,” said London Olympian, Cawthorn, who won the K2 200 silver medal with Belcher last weekend.

“We had confidence from winning the silver in the 200 last week that we know we have to speed, and both of our good endurance paddlers. So we decided to go out to try and win the final today.

“We are pretty excited about winning gold.”

France had a successful morning in the team events taking gold in the K2 Men 1000m and the C4 Men 1000m.

Sweden, Russia, China, Lituania and Italy also each picked up medals.

Paracanoeist continue to pull towards Rio

In the Paracanoe finals Hungary secured three more medals, but it was Austrian World Champion, Markus Swoboda that stole the show by showing his versatility switching from Kayak to Va-a and still managing to secure gold.

Italy’s Veronika Yoko Plebani and the Ukraine’s Natalia Lagutenko will be pleased with their efforts, out sprinting double K1 200 m LTA World Champion, Christine Gauthier (CAN) to secure K1 Women 200m TA gold and silver respectively.

Gauthier collected bronze paddling in above her classification.

Romanian, Iulian Serban and Alexandra Dupik (RUS) won their respective events.

K1 Women 500m – Final
1 Danuta Kozák HUN
2 Yvonne Schuring AUT
3 Teresa Portela POR

K2 Women 500m – Final
1 Lani Belcher / Rachel Cawthorn GBR
2 Karolina Naja / Beata Mikolajczyk POL
3 Sabrina Hering / Steffi Kriegerstein GER

K1 Men 1000m – Final
1 Max Hoff GER
2 Murray Stewart AUS
3 Ken Wallace AUS

C1 Men 1000m – Final
1 Sebastian Brendel GER
2 Attila Vajda HUN
3 Sergiu Craciun ITA

K2 Men 1000m – Final
1 Arnaud Hybois / Etienne Hubert FRA
2 Marcus Gross / Max Rendschmidt GER
3 Andrej Olijnik / Ricardas Nekriosius LTU

C2 Men 1000m – Final
1 Róbert Mike / Henrik Vasbányai HUN
2 Ronand Verch / Yul Oeltze GER
3 Dávid Varga / András Vass HUN

K1 Women 1000m – Final
1 Beata Mikolajczyk POL
2 Sofia Paldanius SWE
3 YU Zhou CHN

K2 Women 1000m – Final
1 Flóra Nagy / Ramóna Farkasdi HUN
2 Nóra Szilvásy / Dóra Bodonyi HUN
3 Anne Knorr / Melanie Gebhardt GER

K4 Men 1000m – Final
1 David Smith / Jacob Clear / Murray Stewart / Tate Smith AUS
2 Zoltán Kammerer / Dániel Máté Pauman / Dávid Tóth / Tamás Kulifai HUN
3 Ervin Holpert / Dejan Terzic / Simo Boltic / Vladimir Torubarov SRB

C4 Men 1000m – Final
1 Mathieu Beugnet / Romain Beugnet / Adrien Bart / Stephane Hascoet (164) FRA
2 Kirill Shamshurin / Rasul Ishmukhamedov / Alexey Bovdurets / Ivan Dubovoy RUS
3 Pál Sarudi / Ádám Tibor Devecseri / Christopher Forgó / Marcell Androkity HUN

K1 Men 200m (Paracanoe-LTA) – Final
1 Iulian Serban ROU
2 Jurij Kikhayev UKR
3 Christian Maranda CAN

V1 Men 200m (Paracanoe-A) – Final
1 Róbert Suba HUN

V1 Men 200m (Paracanoe-TA) – Final
1 Markus Swoboda AUT
2 David Gordon Waters CAN
3 Egor Firsov RUS

K1 Women 200m (Paracanoe-A) – Final
1 Alexandra Dupik RUS
2 Anita Váczi HUN
3 Katalin Kajdi HUN

K1 Women 200m (Paracanoe-TA) – Final
1 Veronika Yoko Plebani ITA
2 Natalia Lagutenko UKR
3 Christine Gauthier CAN. —- ICF