News

It was a great comeback for French kayaker Jeremy Candy. Last year he suffered serious injuries in bycicle accident and this year he won two medals at ECA Canoe Marathon European Championships. First he picked up silver medal in the short race and today he became European Champion together with Quentin Urban in men's K2 event. In the 29,85 kilometres long race they were 1.64 seconds faster than Hungarian duo Adrian Boros - Krisztian Mathe. Miguel Fernandez - Jose Julian from Spain finished third in this event.

 

 

"We are so happy. We had a really bad year last year, big injury and a lot of things, so this is a big revenge for us, so we are really happy," said Quentin Urban after the winning performance and Jeremy Candy added, "The first thing we wanted to do is to be in front as soon as possible. It was a tough race, but I was confident and I knew Quentin is good to lead."

 

 

It was a bad start of the race for the first favourites of women's K2 race Renata Csay and Zsofia Czellai-Voros, as they got caught in the start rope, were pushed back and lost a lot of time in the begginning of the race. This did not stop them to win the European Champion title. They caught the group soon and took the lead. With evert lap their advantage was bigger so they finished the 26,2 kilometres long race in one hour, 54 minutes and 30 seconds, almost a minute and a half faster than second placed Spanish duo Tania Alvarez - Tania Fernandez. Bronze medal also went to Spain thanks to Eva Barrios and Amaia Osaba.

 

 

"The first few kilometres were really challenging for us, but I think we managed them really well and catched the first and we were first in the end, so it was fun. It was hard to catch the group but we know we can do a good pace and we were really confident about ourselves and we just kept going," said Zsofia Czellai-Voros.

 

 

In the men's C2 event Mateusz Zuchora and Mateusz Borgiel won the race in front of Hungarian duo Marton Kover - Adam Docze and Spanish crew Manuel Campos - Diego Romero. All three boats are experienced and have won medals in previous editions of European Championships. Zuchora and Borgiel were second last year in Metković, Hungarians have been European Champions in 2015, second in 2017 and third in 2016, while Campos and Romero won medals with different partners in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

 

 

The most successful nation of the championships was Hungary with a total of 23 medals, nine of them gold, Spain won eleven medals, France six, Denmark five and Ukraine four medals.

The 2020 ECA Canoe Marathon European Championships will be organised in Budapest, Hungary.