The second race of the Nelo Winter Challenge has been held in Portugal last weekend, after the one held last month at Pas de Calais (FRA). At the conclusion of both races, the winner was the French paddler, Maxime Beaumont, who had already won the Pas de Calais competition. This time, there were plenty of contestants from first grade teams, including paddlers from Hungary, Russia, Poland, Norway, France, Spain and Portugal.



On Saturday, the races were over 2.000 metres.  Fernando Pimenta showed the quality of an A grade finalist in Szeged and stopped the clock at an impressive 7'43", 11 seconds over the second paddler - Portuguese Emanuel Silva - while the Russian army was left behind with Beaumont amongst them (Medvedev, Beaumont, Nikolaev and Rhyakov in that order). Behind them were the first Spaniards, Xabier Ruiz de Aretxabaleta ("Pérez" in the results) and Óscar Amandi, both with a very nice time of 8'04". The third Spaniard was Borja Prieto with 8'08" in 12th position. Ekaitz Saies didn't take part over this distance.
With regard to the ladies, the 2.000 winner was for the Olympic champion Natasa Janics, from Hungary, with less than a second over the Portuguese Teresa Portela, both in 9'17", with another Portuguese, Beatriz Gomes in third with  9'18".



The C1 race provided an upset and wasn't for the favourite, Olympic and World champion Attila Vajda, came second behind the promising French paddler, Romain Beugnet (9'12"), showing the great work which France has been doing in this discipline over the last few years. In addition, his brother Mathieu Beugnet placed third, leaving the English paddler, James Train off the podium. First Spanish paddler was José Pregal in eighth position (9'33").



The 200 metres race was held on Sunday and the Spanish paddler, Ekaitz Saies started as one of the favourites. Under very unpleasant weather, a cold, rainy, windy morning the victory went to Canadian Mark de Jonge, who surpassed his rivals in an impressive boost over the last 25 metres. The photo finish showed 3 thousandths of a second difference with Maxime Beaumont second, and third place to Ekaitz Saies.



In C1, the bronze medalist in Szeged, Spanish Alfonso "Sete" Benavides, was surprisingly placed second after the Ucranian Maksymchuk, in a very close final. Third place went to the French paddler Thomas Simart, who just pipped his compatriot, Mathieu Goubel, a finalist in Szeged.



In the ladies category, victory eluded Natasa Janics, who was just beaten by the Polish paddler, Marta Walczykiewicz, while third and fourth places were gained by the Portuguese paddlers, Teresa Portela and Beatriz Gomes.



Download final overall results Nelo Winter Challenge.

Nelo Winter Challenge: www.nelo.eu/en/events/nelo_winter_challenge