Russia tops the medals table on 2nd day of Moscow World Cup

canoe sprint russia moscow

Temperamental weather conditions led to a number of inconsistent performances from athletes competing on the second day of the 2012 ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup in Moscow, Russia. Strong winds provoked strong waves on the course throwing out of the door the expected times of athletes. Russian athletes were seemingly unaffected as they went on top of the medals table.

Iran’s Hediye Kazemi was one of many paddlers who thought that the water conditions prevented them from giving their best performance. Her performance yesterday propelled her to a 3rd place finish in the Women’s K1 500m heats, today she finished in 7th place with Ana Sobetova (RUS), Naomi Flood (AUS) and Anastasiya Sergeeva (RUS) winning the podium places.

“The weather conditions were bad for me today,” said Kazemi. “I wasn’t happy with my result, but I have another race to compete in this afternoon and hopefully it will be better.”

Kazemi’s Bulgarian coach said “We were hoping for a good result, at least for third place but the weather did not cooperate, and also the training conditions in Iran are different. But now we will go back to Iran for the next two months to train and prepare for the Olympic Games.”

Van Koeverden wins first World Cup gold medal this season

In the much anticipated K1 1000m race, Adam van Koeverden (CAN) piped Murray Stewart (AUS) to win first. Murray having had the better start, the two were never far apart in distance and the Canadian won his first World Cup gold medal this season. Russia’s Pavel Nikolaev came in third place rounding up the top three medal winning positions.

Yesterday’s C1 1000m heats suggested that the final race would be a tight one but this was not the reality. Neither Mark Oldershaw (CAN) nor the German boats from yesterdays heats were able to repeat their times or performance as Ilya Shtokalov (RUS), Sergey Yemelyanov (KAZ) and Pavel Rusu (MOL) took 1st, 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Germany’s U23 paddlers shine on day 2

Germany fielded their U23 team at the Moscow World Cup, to give their senior team some rest and their young paddlers some important races. Over the weekend they have proved their star quality giving promising performances and posting some very good results. Kai Spenner and Max Renschmidt (GER) delivered a seamless performance and dominated the K2 1000m final. They have undoubtedly proved to be worthy competitors on the international circuit.

“The wind was a big problem from the beginning to the end but we made it work well. From start to finish our race was perfect and we are very happy with our performance. “
The second place Russian boat of Vasily Pogreban and Vitaly Yurchenko had one of the slowest starts of the race but managed to ward off the charging Australian boat of Ken Wallace and David Smith who came in 3rd place.

After winning the Men’s C2 1000m event Pavol Petrov (RUS) congratulated his boat partner Alexey Bovdurets saying, “I would like to thank Alexey because he is the best. I hope that we can repeat this performance on June 20th when we have the Olympic team selections at the Moscow Regatta.

“The weather conditions were extremely difficult but I think we had a little advantage because we had the first lane and I think the other paddlers probably faced stronger winds”

Rounding up the C2 1000m podium were Petrov and Bovduret’s teammates Alexey Korovashkov and Ilya Pervukhin who seems to be peaking at his home World Cup. The bronze medal went to the Czech Republic’s
Jaroslav Radon and Filip Dvorak.

World Champion and Pan American Champion both go into 200m final

The 200m heats kicked off the afternoon races with the day ending with the semi-finals. Men’s K1 200m Pan American Champion Cesar Ernesto de Cesare (ECU) comfortably won his heat and qualified directly into tomorrow’s Final. Adam van Koeverden came in 2nd place in the heats but 3rd in the sem-final and will go into the B Final. Current world champion Piotr Siemionowski (POL) came in 3rd place in the same heat as de Cesare and van Koeverden but won his semi-final race and is poised to take on the Pan American Champion in the final.

Commenting on the Moscow World Cup, his competition, and his training session ahead of the Olympic Games, Cesar de Cesare yesterday said, “The course is probably the best I have raced in and my preparations here have been very good particularly after a poor race in Poznan and an okay performance in Duisburg.

“Tomorrow morning I think the boats to beat will be Russia and Poland and maybe Azerbaijan.

“My number one goal at the Olympic Games is to finish top 5 in my heats, but of course my hope is to finish on the podium.”

Alana Nicholls, Hediye Kazemi go through to K1 200m Final

In the other 200m semi-final Jevgenij Shuklin (LTU) trumped his competition in the Men’s C1 200m race and will go directly into the final. Mark Oldershaw came in 3rd place in his heat and third in his semi-final also placing him in the B Final. Alana Nicholls (AUS) continues to deliver solid results this weekend and will be looking to secure a gold medal in the K1 200m final tomorrow. Competition will be rife from Russia’s Natalia Podolskaya and Zoya Ananchenko (KAZ) who also go into the finals after their semi-final performance as does Jenni Mikonnen (FIN). The Finn won her K1 200m heat along with Alana Nicholls (AUS) and Hediye Kazemi (IRI).

The final day of competition at will begin tomorrow at 9:30am (CET) with the 200m finals.

The competition will be broadcast live tomorrow by ESPN (USA), Canal Plus (France) and SPORTSNET (Canada) amongst others. Please note that you can also watch the event live on the ICF video website: http://eurovision.digotel.com/icf/index.html.