The dust has barely settled on an incredible Paris Olympic Canoe Sprint programme and a handful of the very best athletes are preparing to line up to do battle again.

The 2024 International Canoe Federation Canoe Sprint World Championships will kick off in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, next weekend, with titles up for grabs over all the non-Olympic distances.

Czech Olympic gold medalists Josef Dostal and Martin Fuksa have barely had a chance to lock their medals away, while Portuguese workhorse Fernando Pimenta is also heading to Samarkand.

Dostal and Pimenta will all line up in the men’s kayak single 500m, fresh from their epic Olympic K1 1000m showdown, while Cuba’s Yarisleidis Cirilo Duboys, Ukraine’s Liudmyla Luzan and Chile’s Maria Jose Mailliard head a strong women’s canoe field.

Around 300 athletes from nearly 50 countries will head to Samarkand, which will be hosting its first major international Canoe Sprint event.

Among the titles on the line will be kayak racing over 200m, K1 500m for men and K1 1000m for women as well as canoe single 200m for men and C1 500m for women.

There will also be 5000m races for men’s and women’s canoe and kayak, and mixed races in both canoe and kayak.

Highlights on the three-day programme will include the men’s C1 500m, with Martin Fuksa set to ride the wave of Olympic euphoria up against former K1 1000m world champion Catalin Chirila of Romania, Germany’s Conrad-Robin Scheibner, Poland’s Wiktor Glazunow and Moldova’s Serghei Tarnovschi.

The ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships begin on Friday and run through to Sunday, and will be live streamed. You can find more information on our official event website.

Full coverage of this week's events in Szeged can be viewed on the ICF’s Premium YouTube channel

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