Daniele Molmenti of Italy claimed the gold, the Czech Republic's Vavrinec Hradilek the silver, and Germany's Hannes Aigner the bronze in the men's kayak class today at Lee Valley White Water Centre.
Unlike the slalom canoe classes, men's kayak has had very few dominant figures. The great Richard Fox of Britain, who won five gold and six overall medals at the world championships from the late 1970s through the early 90s, is the only person to have ruled the class in the same way Jon Lugbill, Michal Martikan, and Tony Estanguet have ruled C1.
Since Fox's retirement, we've seen a small number of paddlers hang around near the top for extended periods--people like Scott Shipley of the U.S. and Paul Ratcliffe of Great Britain in the 90s, and Fabien Lefevre of France, Peter Kauzer of Slovenia, and Molmenti in this past decade--but no single paddler or pair of paddlers has emerged to perform on a higher plane than everybody else in the world.
It's crowded at the top in K1. Peter Kauzer, winner of two of the last three world championships, was in first place after the semifinal round today, but when he faltered in the final, there were plenty of guys right there to take advantage.
Sooner or later, I expect somebody will come along who separates himself from the rest of the world like Richard Fox did during his career. But it just doesn't happen often, and I think maybe that's because K1 has the most participants worldwide of all the slalom classes.
After sticking to the program schedule on its website for two days, NBC let me down today. I went over to my mom's house to watch today's scheduled coverage from 1:30 to 2:00 Central Time (I don't own a working TV, you'll recall), and canoe slalom was nowhere to be found. I hope they don't do that again tomorrow, when coverage of the C2 and K1W semis and finals is supposed to be on TV from 9:15 to 9:40 AM Central.
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