Germany sent out a pre-Games warning they will be the crews to beat after both its men’s and women’s K4 boats stormed to ICF Sprint World Cup gold in Szeged, Hungary, on Saturday.
The Chinese pairing of Shixiao Xu and Mengya Sun continued their dominance of the women’s C2 500, New Zealand’s Lisa Carrington and Alicia Hoskin won the women’s K2 500, Australia’s Tom Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen the men’s K2 500, and the neutral athletes Alexey Korovashkov and Ivan Shtyl took out the men’s C2 500 just days after earning an Olympic quota.
The German women’s quartet came together just one week before the world cup, but showed no teething issues with a slashing win against last year’s gold, silver and bronze medalists.
Paulina Paszek, Jule Hake, Pauline Jagsch and Sarah Bruessler staked a big claim to be the German K4 team in Paris after beating Poland and China, with reigning world champions New Zealand finishing fourth.
“We just came together one week ago, we had some struggles in the training, but in the competition it worked really well, fortunately,” Hake said.
“We will see now what happens with the selections, and hopefully we can be in Paris.”
The German men’s team are looking to defend their Olympic crown in Paris, and showed they are on track with a powerful win over a much improved Australia and Spain.
The win confirmed Max Rendschmidt, Max Lemke, Jacob Schopf and Tom Leibscher-Lucz will once again represent Germany at an Olympic level.
“The first race of the year is always pretty tough, and the last two years were not easy for us,” Schopf said.
“I think the German crew are not the best starters, but we are getting better and better, so it was good to see we could paddle fast at the beginning of the year.”
Shixiao Xu and Mengya Sun have not been beaten in a women’s C2 500 race since before the Tokyo Olympics, and once again showed they will be the team to beat in Paris with what almost seemed to be an effortless win in Szeged.
“Everyone is improving, our opponents are also improving so this is a good gold medal to win,” Xu said.
“We try and avoid the pressure and just focus on ourselves. If you compare us with before Tokyo, I think we are faster.”
Canada’s Sloan MacKenzie and Katie Vincent finished second, with Spain’s Antia Jacome and Maria Corbera taking third.
Lisa Carrington and Alicia Hoskin are hoping to defend New Zealand’s K2 Olympic crown in Paris, and made all the right moves on Saturday with a win against world champions Denmark and Sweden.
“There were still a few boats missing out there, hopefully we’ll get to race them in Poznan, but we had a great battle so it was really cool to see what we’ve got at the moment,” Carrington said.
Australia’s Green and Van der Westhuyzen won K2 1000 gold in Tokyo, but have struggled to turn that into winning form over the new Olympic distance of 500 metres. But in Szeged they showed they are ready for Olympic glory again by beating world champions Portugal and Spain in the world cup final.
“There were still a few boats missing out there, hopefully we’ll get to race them in Poznan, but we had a great battle so it was really cool to see what we’ve got at the moment,” Carrington said.
Australia’s Green and Van der Westhuyzen won K2 1000 gold in Tokyo, but have struggled to turn that into winning form over the new Olympic distance of 500 metres. But in Szeged they showed they are ready for Olympic glory again by beating world champions Portugal and Spain in the world cup final.
“We’ve lined up for this so many times, and most of the time we’ve finished on the podium but we haven’t got that first step yet,” Green said.
“I guess patience has paid off.
“It’s been hard the past two years trying to work put what type of race plan is going to work for us, and how we want to race the race. We’ve had some close races, we’ve had some races we were pretty disappointed in, so I think to have a good race leading up to the Games is great,” Van der Westhuyzen said.
The ICF Sprint World Cup will finish on Sunday.
Pics by Bence Vekassy
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