The battle for Olympic nomination has taken another twist with Martin Marinov and Ferenc Szekszardi taking out the men’s canoe titles at the National Canoe Sprint Championships in Perth on Thursday.
Marinov wound back the clock to complete the C1 and C2 1000 double alongside Szekszardi.
The two-time Olympic bronze medallist entered today needing a victory in either event to keep his Rio ambitions alive.
He firstly combined with Szekszardi to win the C2 1000 final in 3:50.81, 4.15 seconds head of Oceania champions Marius Florian and Jason Nejman.
He completed the double with victory in the C1 1000 in the afternoon ahead of nomination trial one victor Charles Ellis.
Both the C1 and C2 1000 events will now go to a third and final trial to determine who will have earned the right to be nominated to the Australian Olympic Committee.
The C2 1000 race-off is scheduled to take place on Saturday morning at 10:20am local time.
The C1 1000 race-off is scheduled to take place on Sunday morning at 9:37am local time.
Marinov formely worked as a National Coach for the Australian canoe sprint team and is chasing his maiden Olympic appearance for Australia having previously won two Olympic and five world championship medals for Bulgaria.
3 Març 2016