The second round of the World Championship in wild-water slalom being held in Čunovo, nearby Bratislava, was capped with many victories by members of the Slovak team on their home turf. Of the five finals categories, Slovaks won four, and the finals in the single canoe was an absolute Slovak sweep, the TASR newswire wrote.
Michal Martikán won first place, Alexander Slafkovský was second Matej Beňuš finished third in the single canoe competition. Martikán, a winner of four medals at the Olympic Games made a flawless performance and had a finish time of 93.99 seconds. Martikán told the TASR newswire that the race was very demanding.
Slovak women’s national champion, Elena Kaliská, triumphed in the single kayak finals. The winner from the Olympics in Beijing won with a time of 103.47 seconds and Jana Dukátová came in third at 107.31 seconds.
Dukátová, the world champion in 2006, could have been even better but in the end she touched a pole and was penalised by two seconds which pushed her to third place. She redressed this, however, in the single canoe competition where she won with a big margin – the Slovak had a time of 124.10 seconds, almost 11-seconds better than the silver Australian Leane Guinea. Third place was taken by another Slovak, Dana Beňušová.
The Slovak Hochschorner brothers confirmed their good condition when they won the canoe double with a time of 99.73 and beat the winners from the semi-finals, the Škantár cousins. The last Slovak crew, Tomáš Kučera and Ján Bátik came in fourth. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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