MONTEMOR-O-VELHO – The second day of competition was a really good one for the Polish athletes. During the morning, seven finals were going to decide the champions in K1 1000, K2 1000, C1 1000, C2 1000, K4 1000 and C4 1000 (all men) and C2 200 (women), and Poland took the podium’s first place six times.
Pawel Szandrach won the first race (K1 1000) and was very happy about the result. “I’ve been training a lot in the last weeks, so it was a deserved victory, although I wasn’t feeling very well in the beginning of the race. This is the fourth medal that I win in Portugal, which is good. But it is the training with my team – which is composed by the best athletes of my country – that makes me get good results.”
His team partner Vincent Slominski won twice this morning – C1 1000 and C2 1000. “These medals are the result of the hard training that I’ve done for the World Cup, last weekend.” Considering the great morning this team has had, Rafal Rosolski – winner of K2 1000 – shared that “we don’t know if we are going to win all disciplines, but we will certainly try!”
The only female race (K2 200) was also dominated by the Polish athletes. Anna Pulawska and Dominika Wlodarczyk were expected to win and they actually won the gold medal after beating the other eight competitors. Dominika said that “this is the first victory in world championships since we compete together. We paddle with the best athletes of the whole world and we are always training to have access to the best venues for training.”
Medal Podium K2 200 Women
Lastly, Patrik Szále starred the only discipline that wasn’t won by Poland and gave Hungary the wanted gold medal. “It was really difficult to win this medal because everyone here is really good and strong and it was hard to control the boat. We can’t go to the Olympics so we are really happy for being here. Everything is very well organized.”
In the afternoon, four semi-finals took place and the day finished with the dinner of delegations in Coimbra. The participants gathered for a dinner to share experiences and socialize in a non-competitive way. Today, the competition starts at 10 a.m. and with finals taking place the whole day.
(Source: 7th WUC Canoe Sprint OC)
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