John Gregory | @gregiej | Sportscene - The Brazilian National Championships was a perfectly organised race in Foz do Iguaçu that looked much like a World Cup. With the exception of Cássio Petry in C1M the senior champions; Ana Sátila, Pedro (Pepe) Henrique Gonçalves, Anderson Oliveira & Charles Correa, have all previously won the Brazilian National Championships.

The C1M senior winner, Cássio Petry had an excellent performance only 7% behind the winning K1M. His final edged out the two young C1 paddlers, Felipe Borges da Silva and Léonardo Lucas Curcel, who had won the heat and semi-final respectively. Léo’s semi-final run was half a second quicker than Cássio’s final run.

There was a nice performance in the K1M as well, as Fábio Scchena Dias Rodrigues won the semi-final and is getting closer to Pepe. Fábio is up from 4th or 5th and now consistently 2nd, close to Pepe and pushing him harder each race.

Technical coach, Guillermo Diez-Canedo commented; “I would like to mention as well how Pepe managed to deal with the pressure of being the favourite in a class that is quite close. Everyone expected him to win, and even if he could have done better, he still won his third-in-a-row Brazilian championship.”

Guillermo continued; “Ana [Sátila] won her first official national title as it's the first time she raced in seniors as she is still a junior. She already had the best times last year. Ana has a good competition against herself. Although she doesn't have the need, she's analysing the course before and between runs the fast way, not the safe way. She's trying to be faster every run, even if it means to be a little riskier than she would need for these races. This situation could be a concern, but seeing how she handles it, it has become a challenge. Besides, she must do both C1 and K1 in a very short time, what increases the challenge against herself.”

Ana finishes 2013 as ICF ranked number 16 in C1W and 62 in K1W.

The course was a very fast and simple one with a similar style to heats course for the Prague Worlds. Most of the upstreams were in very good eddies making it a fast and smooth race. It had two delicate points; gates 12-13 through a stopper to reach an upstream, and a similar move on 21-22 leading into two downs and at the very end of the course. One curiosity was upstream gate 15 which didn't change between courses. Everybody completed as a normal upstream in heats and switched to an ‘S’ gate in the semi-final despite the previous and flowing gates being unchanged.

Reviewing the race analysis shows the winners of the heats, semi-final and then final for the respective classes for seniors, juniors and U14. There was no C1W junior or C1W and C2 in the U14 races. It is particularly interesting to note how quick some of the junior final times in K1M, C1M and C2 relative to the senior winning times.

Winners of heats, semi-final and final

Download more statistics and results

The Foz National Championships race contributed double points towards the 2013 Brazilian Cup rankings. There is still one race of the Brazilian Cup rankings for 2013 at Piraju, São Paulo in December.

You can read more about the Brazilian team’s 2013 and ambitions for the future in the previous article 'An evening with the Brazilian Canoe Slalom team'.

The venue for the 2016 Olympic canoe slalom has now been confirmed as Rio, which pleases the Brazilian team themselves.

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