Royal Canoe Club - The International Olympic Committee has dismissed a bid to have the winning Hungarian boat in the women’s K4 500m Olympic final disqualified on the ground that one of its members was ineligible to race in it.

There was a complaint that the paddler, Krisztina Fazekas, who has nine sprint world championship medals to her name, was not eligible to compete for Hungary because she’d raced for the US in 2011.

Fazekas (far right in the picture) is married to Israeli and US canoeist Rami Zur, himself a former Olympian, lives in California and did represent the US last year, according to her Wikipedia profile.

In a ruling by its executive board in Switzerland, however, the IOC declared that Fazekas was still eligible to have raced for Hungary and so the result would stand.

Had the complaint been upheld, Poland would have secured the bronze medal, behind Germany and Belarus.

The other members of the successful Hungarian women’s crew were Danuta Kozak, Katalin Kovacs and Gabriella Szabo, pictured above in London, celebrating.

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The text of the IOC decision can be found on its website here.