Last gold medals for the Czech kayak women team and Slovenian C1 men
The last races of the 2020 ECA European Canoe Slalom Championships in Prague were the team competitions of women kayakers and men canoeists. Czech kayakers Kateřina Kudějová, Veronika Vojtová, Antonie Galušková won the European title. A great drama was offered in the race of canoeists. At first, it looked like the triumph of the Czech crew. After the arrival of the Slovenes, who were faster, the Czechs fell to the silver medal, but later an additional 50-second penalty was lit for the Slovenes. It disappeared again after a few minutes and, on the contrary, reappeared with the Czechs for badly passing of the gate 6. In the final ranking, the Czechs have an unpopular fourth place; the European champions are the team of Slovenia.
K1W Teams
Three individual finalists from the today´s K1 women competition – that was the trio of the Czech kayak team. Kateřina Kudějová, Veronika Vojtová and Antonie Galušková were going very well and in the finish, they achieved 139.64 s.
French team takes silver (Camilie Prigent, Lucie Baudu, Marjorie Delassus) and Austria bronze (Corinna Kuhnle, Nina Weratschnig, Antonia Oschmautz).
“We had a good plan and it worked pretty well too,“ described Kudějová. “I do not take it as a revenge for the individual final. I am glad for the both races and it is great that we won now,“ said Vojtová. „”Sunday is a good day, so it is good for me too,“ closed Galušková.
C1M Teams
Seven teams of the C1 men started in the last competition of the championships.
Czechs with Lukáš Rohan, Vojtěch Heger and Václav Chaloupka crossed the finish line in 128.44 s and took the lead. However, everything was different in the end.
The last team on the start was from Slovenia: Benjamin Savšek, Luka Božič and Jure Lenarčič. The performed very well with a fast run but they got the 50 second penalisation after they arrived to the finish. After the video analysis, the 50 was erased and they took the lead.
Unfortunately for the Czech team, they got the 50 and ended fourth.
Silver surprisingly for Ireland (Liam Jegou, Robert Hendrick, Jake Cochrane) and bronz to Poland (Grzegorz Hedwig, Kacper Sztuba, Szymon Zawadzki).
Luka Bozic: “I asked guys how was it and they said it was all clean so we were sure it was some mistake. I am really happy for the gold medal again. We had really smooth run. It was important to have enough space so each of us could go in his own line.
Benjamin Savsek: It is a great feeling, I won again two gold medals like the championship before, so it is amazing. We knew that nobody did the mistake, so we thought it was a mistake of the judges, then we were really happy.
Jure Lenarcic: I have very good feeling. I felt very good during the run, the entire run was nice, so I am very happy. I was not thinking about the result at the start, but I wanted to focus on my own job and I think each of us did the job the best.”