Aug 05, 2021
WOMEN’S K1 500m: Lisa Carrington has won her third Tokyo gold in the K1 500m kayak final.
WOMEN’S C-1 200m: Harrison of the USA happy of winning gold in the C-1 200m class.
MEN’S K-1 200m: Hungarian Totka wins the K-1 200m men’s canoe sprint at the Olympics
MEN’S K-2 1000m: First ever aussie gold medal won by Van der Westhuyzen and Green at the K-2 1000m race.
Lisa Carrington now has six medals - five of them gold - in her third Olympics. She has become New Zealand’s greatest Olympian after winning three gold medals at the Tokyo 2020 Games. This adds to her collection of six medals, passing by fellow kayakers Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald who won five and equestrian Sir Mark Todd.
Her victory at the Sea Forest Waterway, beating Hungary’s Tamara Csipes and Denmark’s Emma Jorgensen in third was sublime. She can still aim for the four golds at the Tokyo Olympic Games when she races in the K4 500m competition on Saturday.
Nevin Harrison of the USA (19) has won the gold medal in the women’s canoe single 200m competition at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games. She led the competition from the start and won in a time of 45.932.
Canada’s Laurence Vincent-Lapointe has claimed their first silver medal in the competition while bronze went to Ukraine’s Liudmyla Luzan. They battled at the Sea Forest Waterway where Harrison set an Olympic best time of 44.9.38 in the heats.
Liam Heath had to settle for bronze as Sandor Totka held on until the end against Manfredi Rizza to claim gold in the Men’s Kayak Single 200m final. The European champion showed his skills at Tokyo to win the final in a time of 35.035.
Manfredi Rizza of Italy was barely 0.045 seconds behind the Hungarian, claiming the silver medal. Despite winning, Totka has become the last ever Olympic men’s K1 200m champion in the event not included in the programme for Paris 2024.
Heath holds four Olympic medals in total: he came third in the K2 200m final at London 2012 before winning silver in that event and gold in the K1 200m at Rio 2016.
Jean van der Westhuyzen and Thomas Green have become the new K2 1000m Olympic champions. The pair was able to establish an early lead over the German world champions Max Hoff and Jacob Schopf. They finished with a time of 3:15.280.
Despite the Germans trying to recover and charge as quickly as possible, their time of 3:15.584 was not enough to win. Czech Republic’s Josef Dostal and Radek Slouf won bronze, finishing in 3:16.106.
Before this moment, Australia had two other K2 canoe sprint medals, but never the gold. In Melbourne 1956, Dennis Green and Wally Brown won bronze in the now discontinued 10,000-metre event. Clint Robinson and Nathan Baggaley won silver at Athens 2004.
More related news:
New Zealand at the lead of the canoe sprints Olympics
The golden performance from Czech Olympic Champion Prskavec
First ever women’s canoe slalom Olympic gold
Slovenia’s first gold medal in the men’s C1 canoe slalom
Image credit to Reuters