The C1 semifinal and final took place today at the Olympic whitewater slalom venue in Lee Valley, north of London. I was mistaken in what I wrote in yesterday's post about semifinal and final scores being combined: they are not. The scores in the one-run semifinal determine who moves through to the final, and then the finalists take one more run with a clean slate.
In the semifinal round today, a field of twelve C1s was trimmed to eight. Not making the cut was the host country's David Florence, the silver medalist in Beijing four years ago and the top-ranked C1 in the world entering the Olympic competition.
That left all eyes on the two who have ruled the class over the last decade and a half. Michal Martikan won the gold medal on the Ocoee in 1996 at age 17; he added a world title the following year, and seemed on his way to being the greatest ever. But at Penrith in 2000, a gate-touch on his first run left the door open for his competitors (in that Olympics the final round consisted of two runs, whose scores were combined), and a truly magnificent second run was not quite enough to overcome the two solid runs of Frenchman Tony Estanguet.
The two met again in Athens in 2004, and this time Martikan appeared to have won the race until a late judge's call penalized him two seconds for grazing an upstream gate near the top of the course. So again Estanguet took gold and Martikan settled for silver.
In the 2008 Beijing Games, Estanguet paddled poorly in the semifinal round and failed to make the eight-boat final. So the final was Martikan's to win or lose, and he won, convincingly.
Today, the two both finished in the middle of the semifinal pack, and so were in the middle of the starting order for the final. Martikan went first, and while his run was very, very solid, easily putting him into the lead, I could sense that it wasn't quite the best he had in him. Two boats later, Estanguet laid down a superb run that was 1.25 seconds better than Martikan's. Then the last paddler on the course, Sideris Tasiadis of Germany, overtook Martikan as well.
And so the first whitewater slalom medals of these Olympic Games go to athletes from France, Germany, and Slovakia, probably the three most powerful nations in the sport. Here in the U.S., we have a couple of sports in which we expect our athletes to be on the podium--swimming, certainly, and the sprint events on the track. Well, for France, Germany, and Slovakia, whitewater slalom is that sport.
The results of the C1 semifinal are here. The results of the C1 final are here.
UPDATE: You can now watch the medal ceremony here. Martikan is handling it with class, but he clearly is not satisfied with the bronze. Tasiadis looks over the moon to have finished in the medals. He was born in Greece and has dual Greek-German citizenship; he could have competed for Greece, but boldly chose the much tougher German system. Looks like it's paid off.
For those who want to try to keep score in the "Who's the greatest, Martikan or Estanguet?" debate, Estanguet now has three Olympic gold medals to Martikan's two. Martikan has five overall Olympic medals to Estanguet's three. In the world championships that take place every non-Olympic year, Martikan has won ten medals, four of them gold, while Estanguet has won six medals, three of them gold. Bear in mind that the world championships is more competitive than the Olympics because each nation may enter three boats per class, compared to (at most) one in the Olympics.
(I'll just add that I think Jon Lugbill of the U.S. still deserves to be in the "best-ever" conversation. Lugbill won no Olympic medals, but whitewater slalom was not on the Olympic programme for most of his career. Furthermore, the world championships were biennial in his era, whereas now they occur in every non-Olympic year. Lugbill won five golds and one silver in world championship competition.)
The men's kayak class has its semifinal and final rounds tomorrow. According to the NBC Olympics website, there will be some on-the-air coverage (probably not live) from 1:30 to 2:00 PM Central Time.
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