C2 and K1W heats

Action continued today in Olympic whitewater slalom racing, with the qualifying heats for men's double canoe and women's kayak.

In C2, the top ten boats are moving on to Thursday's semifinal round.  Among them are Slovakia's Hochschorner brothers, Peter and Pavol.  Already the greatest C2 of all time, this pair is going for its fourth Olympic gold in four tries.  The results of the C2 qualification round are here.

The K1W class, in which the top fifteen would advance, was full of excitement, with several of the top ladies having problems in their runs but hanging in there to make the cut.  Maialen Chourraut of Spain, who normally attacks the course ferociously with a high stroke rate, looked like she was out for a relaxing river-run today, and still laid down the fastest time.  She'll have plenty left in the tank when she enters the starting gate for her semifinal run on Thursday.  The results of the K1W qualification round are here.

Sadly, the U.S. is now 0-for-4 in its attempt to move a boat beyond the qualification round.  The team of Jeff Larimer and Eric Hurd finished twelfth in C2, while Caroline Queen finished 17th in K1W.

So far, the only actual footage I have seen of all this racing is what was on TV this morning.  NBC showed some of the first runs in the qualification round of the K1W class.  Kudos to Eric Giddens, who raced slalom back when I did in the 1990s, for his job of color commentary for NBC.  I attempted to sign up for the live online feed using my mother's cable subscription, but ran into all kinds of technical difficulties on the Comcast website.  After spending over an hour on hold to talk to a couple of less-than-helpful Comcast representatives, I'm about ready to raise the white flag on that front.

Now that the semifinal fields are all set, what happens next?  Well, the C1s will be up tomorrow, with twelve paddlers still in the hunt.  Each paddler will take a run on the course (which will be different from the course used for qualifying).  Those with the eight best scores will move on to the final, in which they will take one more run.  Each paddler's final score will be combined with his semifinal score, and those combined scores will determine the overall places.

The K1 class will go through the same process on Wednesday, with the top ten semifinalists moving on to the final.

On Thursday, the top six C2 semifinalists will make the final, as will the top ten K1W semifinalists.