News

Around 350 competitors from 29 European countries will fight for the European champion titles on the Soča River between Thursday and Sunday. Among them will also be the competitors we were able to follow at the Tokyo Olympics and the medal winners at the senior championships and World Cup races.

 

Among the registered countries we can find representatives of Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Spain, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and of course Slovenia.

 

Slovenian representatives are highly motivated before the second domestic peak of the season (at the beginning of July the Canoe Slalom World Championships for juniors and U23 was already held in Ljubljana). In Tacen, kayaker Jan Ločnikar won an individual medal among juniors, and former junior world champion Nejc Polenčič also wants to prove himself at his home course. “At the World Championships in Tacen, I didn't do well because I made a couple of mistakes in the semi-finals. I will try to improve this result, we will see how it turns out. I have been training on this course since the age of eleven, so I know all the waves. But a lot will depend on the water level. I hope it will be higher, that it will be more fluid, so that everything will have to be taken more technically.”

 

The competition under the famous Solkan bridge will be fierce. This year's Olympians Tereza Fišerova, Monica Doria Vilarrubla, Marta Bertoncelli, Monika Skachova, Gabriel De Coster, Alsu Minazova, Naemi Braendle, Alena Marx, senior European champion from 2019 Gabriela Satkova, Miquel Trave, Vojtech Heger, Marko Mirgorodsky, Jules Bernardet, Bethan Forrow and many others are entered in the competition.  

 

The competitions will start on Thursday with the women’s and men’s kayak heats in both age groups, followed by the heats of canoeists on Friday morning, and in the afternoon team competitions of all categories and time trials in extreme slalom will follow. The individual semifinals and finals in K1 and the final phase in the extreme slalom are scheduled for Saturday, and on Sunday the championship will end with the canoe semifinals and finals.