NBC kept its promise and showed about a half-hour of slalom on the air this morning. It was the final of the C2 class, and the way it unfolded, I was reminded that no amount of political and commercial nonsense can kill the Olympic spirit entirely.
C2 is the smallest of the Olympic slalom classes, and I'm not surprised that it is. It's hard enough to reach the world-class level in any sport; to coordinate that effort with another person, and spend years building the familiarity between partners that the best C2s have, is a daunting task indeed.
The final of this smallest of classes contained only six boats. But they put on as good a show as anybody in this Olympic slalom.
Everybody was watching Pavol and Peter Hochschorner of Slovakia; already the greatest C2 of all time regardless of what happened today, they wanted to put that final exclamation point on their unbelievable career.
Meanwhile, the British were hoping to salvage what had been a disappointing showing up to this point: none of their entries in the other three classes had made it past the semifinal round. Thanks to a quirk in the rules, they had two boats entered in the C2 class. The team of David Florence and Richard Hounslow had won the British selection trials, but as each of these paddlers had already made the Olympic team in another class--Florence in C1, Hounslow in K1--they were not adding to their nation's overall canoe/kayak body count. And so the British were allowed a second C2, manned by Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott, in the Games. (The Czech Republic also had two C2s in Lee Valley, as their top C2 contained their K1 Olympian, Vavrinec Hradilek, and their C1 Olympian, Stanislav Jezek. Both Czech C2s competed in the semifinal today but did not make the final.)
Baillie and Stott had finished sixth in the semifinal, so they were the first boat on the course in the final round, and they uncorked a superb run that was more than two seconds faster than the top semifinal run. The bar had been set high, and a Chinese team, a Polish team, and a French team all made good shots at it before falling short.
Then came the Hochschorners, who had been solid, but unspectacular, in qualification and in the semifinals, doing just what they had to do to move on to the next round. But now the racing was for real, and these winners of the last three Olympic gold medals and five-time world champions were holding nothing back. "They look like they're trying now," said NBC color analyst Eric Giddens, a slalom Olympian himself in 1996.
Then, at Gate 16, came a very un-Hochschorneresque moment: coming out of the upstream gate, sternman Peter brushed the inside pole with his forearm. The seasoned pair continued on as if nothing had happened and finished an excellent run that was 0.13 second faster than that of Baillie/Stott, but the two-second penalty knocked them back to a distant second place.
With their other C2 the only one left up at the start, the British were guaranteed the gold medal. Florence and Hounslow were outstanding in their attempt to make it theirs, but crossed the finish beam just 0.36 second slower than their teammates. They didn't seem to care. The four Brits were soon out of their boats and splashing around deliriously in the water. Their coaches joined them, and with the British fans dancing in the stands, joyful anarchy seemed imminent until a race official ran down to the riverside screaming "Out! OUT!!!" The women's kayak final was set to begin, so there was no time for this infernal mucking about.
All the while the Hochschorners sat on the bank in a state of disbelief, much as their countryman Michal Martikan had done after failing to win the C1 class two days earlier. The TV camera also caught the fourth-place French team, who had hoped to add another Olympic medal to their country's proud tradition of C2 excellence. Bowman Gauthier Klauss appeared to be sobbing.
And so the C2 final had it all. Triumph. Heartbreak. Redemption. The semifinal results are here. The final results are here.
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