The United States has its first whitewater slalom Olympic medalist in 20 years. Evy Leibfarth of Bryson City, North Carolina, finished third in the women's canoe class yesterday at the venue in Vaires-sur-Marne, France. Evy joins Jamie McEwan (men's single canoe bronze 1972), Scott Strasbaugh and Joe Jacobi (men's double canoe gold 1992), Dana Chladek (women's kayak bronze 1992 and women's kayak silver 1996), and Rebecca Giddens (women's kayak silver 2004) on the list of U.S. team members who have medaled at the Olympics.
Twelve paddlers advanced from the semifinal to the final, and because Evy finished 12th in the semi, she was the first athlete on the course in the final. Once her run was finished, she had to stand and watch while the other eleven finalists took their runs. Her score withstood challenges from four paddlers, but then Elena Lilik of Germany bettered it by more than six seconds. Another four paddlers tried and failed to beat Evy's run. Then came Jessica Fox. As I mentioned in my post on Monday, there was already little doubt that the Australian is the dominant slalom athlete of the modern era and one of the greatest ever, but she reaffirmed her status with a run that was nearly two and a half seconds faster than Lilik's. Fox now owns more Olympic medals than any other whitewater slalom racer in history: three golds, a silver, and two bronzes. She is also the first slalom racer to win two golds at the same Olympics, though I should note that this is only the fourth Olympics in which an athlete has been allowed to enter more than one class in slalom, and only the second Games in which more than one class has been available to women. Regardless, it's been a history-making week for Jessica Fox.
You can watch TV coverage of the women's canoe class, including the complete final runs of Leibfarth, Lilik, and Fox, here, here, and here.
Back here in good old Memphis, Tennessee, it was just plain hot yesterday. I rode my bike out to Shelby Farms and back and got plenty sweaty. I finished the ride just before lunch, and felt I'd earned the right to spend the rest of the day in the air-conditioned indoors.
It was another hot one today: the temperature was rapidly approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit when I got down to the river around 9:20 this morning. I was in the mood to do some wake surfing out on the mighty Mississippi, but I found the river deserted when I got to the mouth of the harbor. So I returned to the dock and hopped in the whitewater boat. Lots of Eskimo rolls to cool off made for a good consolation prize. I've generally been feeling really good in this boat, though I doubt I'm paddling nearly as well as any of the 41 male and female C1 racers who just competed in Paris.
While I was doing my own paddling this morning, the one remaining Olympic slalom class had its semifinal and final. There would be no medalist from the U.S. in men's kayak because the U.S. did not qualify to enter an athlete. Other than that, it was a pretty typical men's K1 field: several racers had had success over the last decade, including Jiri Prskavec of the Czech Republic, Joe Clarke of Great Britain, and Peter Kauzer of Slovenia; but there were also a whole bunch of hot new guys. In women's canoe yesterday there was a gap of more than eight seconds separating first place from third, but the podium positions would almost certainly be tighter today.
And indeed they were. The winner was Giovanni de Gennaro of Italy; just two tenths of a second back was Titouan Castryck of France. Both had clean runs in the final. The bronze medalist, Pau Echaniz of Spain, had the fastest raw time of all the finalists, but a two-second gate-touch penalty knocked him back to third place, 0.65 second behind de Gennaro.
When I watch the world-class slalom K1 racers, I can never get over the all-out speed of these guys, and the risks they take to shave tenths of seconds. I encourage folks to watch this video footage with that in mind.
For more information on what this blog is about, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment