There will be two primary canoeing events at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris: canoe sprint, which will take place from August 6 to 10, and canoe slalom, which will take place from July 27 to August 5. In Vaires-sur-Marne, the National Olympic Nautical Stadium of Île-de-France will host the sprint and canoe slalom competitions.
The competition will include sixteen events, and the schedule has undergone some major changes. In keeping with the Olympic drive towards gender equality, the men's and women's K-1 200-meter sprint races will be replaced by the men's and women's slalom kayak cross event, which will debut in Paris in 2024.
Canoeing Olympics History
Originally referred to as flatwater canoeing, canoe sprint made its debut as an Olympic demonstration event in Paris in 1924. Twelve years later, in 1936, it was included in the men's Olympic schedule for the Berlin Games.
At the London 1948 Games, women raced in the K1 500m division for the first time. On August 13, 2009, the International Canoe Federation declared that 200-meter events, including the women's K-1 200-meter event, would take the place of the men's 500-meter events at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
In the second half of the 20th century, Brazil became a canoe sprint destination worldwide. The South American Canoe Championships were held in Sao Paulo in 1988. Ten years later, in Entre Rios Oeste, Parana was the International Canoe World Cup venue. Curitiba, also in Parana, hosted the ICF Junior World Championships in 2001 and the ICF World Cup in 2000.
Canoeing Olympics Rules
Athletes receive a warning, and the competition restarts if they begin paddling after the verbal signal but before the sound signal. Boats are not allowed to approach another boat within five meters to avoid their riding each other's wakes.
Once the competition has begun, team members cannot be replaced. Illness or injury aside, start lists are set once the competition starts. An athlete will be disqualified if they are unable to compete.
A competitor's race time is penalized two seconds for touching a gate and fifty seconds for completely missing one, resulting in an extremely harmful 50-second penalty. A contender must pass through the gates in the numerical sequence that they are marked.
In canoe slalom, the overall running time and the penalty seconds are added together to get the final score. The winner is the contestant with the lowest score.
Canoeing Olympics Facts
- Men's kayak slalom pairs were one of the events from the Rio 2016 Olympics that was dropped from the schedule to promote gender balance in the competition.
- The slalom events require participants to weave between "gates" in simulated rapids, with the option of moving around the gate in either an upstream or downstream direction, depending on the gate's instructions.
- Time is the criteria for judging slalom competitors; errors such as contacting a pole or missing a gate result in time violations.
- European competitors do well in this competition, winning most of the medals at world championships and the Games.