Italian Raffaello Ivaldi broken through for the biggest win in his career against a field in which he doubted he belonged, while Australia’s Jessica Fox won her third C1 world cup gold of the season on the first day of slalom finals at La Seu, Spain.
An emotional Ivaldi said after his C1 slalom win he was always questioning if he would ever be good enough to belong with the world’s best paddlers.
“You train hard your entire life, you work hard, and you get to the races and the field is just amazing, everybody is so good, everybody is racing so fast, and you ask yourself if you deserve to be in the middle of these guys,” Ivaldi said.
“Then you fail, and you fail again, so you keep going back to work. But in the end days like today arrive, it is worth it. Many times I felt like I didn’t belong, I trained my entire life, I have to thank my entire life, I have to thank my entire team, they are always supportive of me every time after I failed.”
Ivaldi edged out Slovenia’s Luka Bozic for the gold. Bozic, who won gold at the previous world cup in Tacen, had a two second penalty for a gate touch which cost him the gold medal. Slovakia’s Marko Mirgorodsky took the bronze.
In the women’s final Jessica Fox continued her barnstorming form of 2023, winning her third C1 gold from four starts. Fox had two gate touches and four seconds in penalties, but still finished just 0.08 seconds ahead of Germany’s Andrea Herzog.
Fox, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, said she took risks in her final run because she wanted to test herself.
“I analysed the risks, I hesitated, I think it’s always good to challenge yourself because sometimes you’re in a position where you know that that is faster and riskier, but sometimes you’ve just got to try and give it everything and take that risk to try and scrape a few seconds,” Fox said.
“I don’t think you can be complacent. It’s been a good world cup season so far, we’ve only got a couple of weeks to go before the world championships so hopefully I can just keep plodding along.”
Great Britain’s Kimberley Woods finished with the bronze medal.
RESULTS
WOMEN’S C1
- FOX Jessica (AUS) 107.09 (4 seconds in penalties)
- HERZOG Andrea (GER) 107.17 (0)
- WOODS Kimberley (GBR) 109.02 (2)
MEN’S C1
- IVALDI Raffaello (ITA) 96.52 (0)
- BOZIC Luka (SLO) 97.53 (2)
- MIRGORODSKY Marko (SVK) 97.63 (0)
Pics by Marc Etxaniz
