Kayaker Prskavec dominated the SP in Troja for the fifth time, Přindiš finished second

WC water slalom races, semi-finals K1 men, June 9, 2023, Prague. Jiří Prskavec from the Czech Republic.

Prague – Olympic champion Jiří Prskavec won the kayakers' World Cup race in Prague's Troja for the fifth time in his career. The triumph of the Czech slalom skiers was enhanced by the second place of reigning world champion Vít Přindiš. Jakub Krejčí took seventh place in his debut in the domestic cup race. In the women's race, during the sovereign victory of Australian star and three-time K1 world champion Jessica Fox, Amálie Hilgertová took fourth place, Tereza Fišerová finished eighth.

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Photo gallery: Water slalom races 2023

Three, Prindiš finished secondý” /> Three, Prindiš finished secondý” />

Prskavec, like Foxová, already dominated the qualification and semi-finals on the artificial channel in Troja. In the race for the medal, he was the only one to complete the course under 90 seconds and followed up on the triumphs in Prague from 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2021. A week after the bronze in the canoe from Augsburg, he thus won the first valuable metal in this year's WC in the kayak.

“I am happy that this year, perhaps for the first time, I performed the race completely as I imagined it. I drove great rides, balanced. Moreover, the last one was damn hard. I knew Vítka's time. When the Czech is leading and he is a Czech at the start, so everyone has to have goosebumps, including me. It's nice to manage in this,” he told reporters.

Přindiš lost to him by 88 hundredths of a second. “I drove a good ride. I was very happy with it, except for the mishap in the last roll. I won silver and I'm very happy. Jiří deserved it, he won three races in a row, hats off,” remarked Přindiš, the winner race from 2017.

The Czech duo was joined on the podium by the Italian Giovanni de Gennaro, who triumphed in the first SP race in Augsburg and this time was behind Prskavec by 1.15 seconds. Krejčí was the only Czech kayaker to touch the goal, without him he would have been sixth.

Hilgert was 1.34 seconds away from the medal. “The ride wasn't very good. I had quite big mistakes there, which luckily I made up for with passages that were extremely successful for me. I didn't even expect that it would come out so high with that time,” commented the kayaker, whose maximum in the SP is third place from last year's race in Krakow.

She committed one “bump” on the track, just like the bronze medalist Mallory Franklin and reigning world champion Ricarda Funk from Germany, who finished second behind the flawlessly driven Fox by a whopping 4.63 seconds. Fišerová received two two-second penalties, moreover, she made a mistake and only defeated opponents who did not pass one of the goals.

Results of the WC in water slalom in Prague

K1:

< strong>Men: 1. Prskavec (0 tr. seconds) 89.67, 2. Přindiš (both Czech Republic) -0.88 (0), 3. De Gennaro (It.) -1.15 (0), …7. Krejčí (ČR) -4.83 (2).