John Gregory @gregiej | Sportscene - It was a dramatic start to the 2013 European racing season in Krakow this weekend. The Polish organisers of the European Canoe Slalom championships should be applauded in managing to stage the event given the heavy flooding throughout central Europe in the last week, which at one point put the race in jeopardy. The race schedule was modified to allow one single heat going into a final run.

Sunday’s K1W & C2 races
Fiona Pennie was officially crowned European Canoe Slalom Champion today with two flawless runs in Krakow, Poland. The 30-year old Scot produced two exceptionally consistent runs between the single heat and final, a mere 0.07 seconds apart but a huge 3.50 seconds ahead of Stefanie Horn from Italy. Horn was similarly consistent to finish both the heat and final just behind Pennie. It was a very tight technical course and Pennie showed real class being the only paddler to win both their heat and final.

In winning the title, Fiona becomes the first British K1W paddler to win the European Championships and improves upon the bronze medal she won at the European Championships in Augsburg last year. Surprisingly neither two time Olympians Hilgertova or Kaliska made the European K1W final cut and previous World Champions Kuhnle and Schornberg were unable to go clear in the final.

The C2 teams as always were world class with 3 previous European Championships crews on the start line, including 6-time European Champions the Hochschorners, defending and 3-time European Champions Volf & Stepanek from Czech Republic and 2-time European C2 Champions the Skantars. However, on the day this was not their day and they couldn’t break into the top 6 crews. The top 3 C2 crews all went clear, which is truly remarkable given the tightness of the course. Congratulations to Pierre Laberelle and Nicolas Peschier from France for a well-deserved win.

Each of the individual class winners were different than 2012 and in fact only Caroline Loir has been a previous European Champion having won the C1W also in 2011 in La Seu D’Urgell. This is positive as we see a new group of paddlers coming through early in the next Olympic cycle ahead of Rio in 2016.

It is interesting to look at the respective classes as a percentage of the winning K1M time, which was Jiri Prskavec from the Czech Republic in 81.17 seconds.

Percentage of winning K1M time

Team Event

The medal table was topped by France with an impressive four golds and Germany with the most medals overall. This is a change from the last European Championships in Augsburg in 2012 where Germany topped the medal table, followed by France and Slovakia. The Czechs improved from 5th in 2012 to 2nd and this will motivate them ahead of the Prague World’s in September. I am sure the Polish team will have been disappointed not to have secured a gold on their home course. They did show some good form in the heats by qualifying 5 boats for the finals and silver in the C2 Team event.

The adage of ‘fast and clean’ has always been applied to canoe slalom. The single pole rules, shorter boats and bigger water are reducing the margin of error. To illustrate the point, there were more than 85, 50-second penalties in Krakow this weekend, including 15 in the individual finals! However, it is worthy to note that all five winners did so with a clear run.

The next key international race is the first of 5 World Cup races on the Cardiff International Whitewater Centre in Wales on June 21-23.

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