Canoe Slalom at the 1992 Summer Olympics

The biggest change in 1992 Olympic canoeing was that whitewater slalom canoeing was returned to the Olympic Program. It had been contested at the 1972 München Olympics, and has been on the Olympic Program since 1992. There were four slalom events, kayak and Canadian singles for men, men’s Canadian doubles, and women’s kayak singles. This program would remain standard through 2016 for canoe slalom.

The whitewater events were held at the Parc Olímpic del Segre in La Seu d’Urgell, a town in the Catalan Pyrenees north of Barcelona. Although La Seu d’Urgell is located at the confluence of the Segre and the Valira rivers, the Parc Olímpic del Segre was built in 1990 specifically for the Barcelona Olympics. This was as in 1972 at München, and the cost of constructing an artificial whitewater facility put whitewater canoeing at risk for being removed from the Olympic program in the future. The 1992 course was not fully artificial, but pumps were added to circulate the water in Seu d’Urgell.

The man who was most severely impacted by slalom canoe missing from the Olympic Program in 1976-88 was the American, Jon Lugbill. Between 1979 and 1991, he won 13 World Championship medals, 12 of them gold, in the C-1 and C-1 team, including individual gold medals in 1979, 1981, 1983, 1987, and 1989. At 31-years-old in Barcelona he was past his prime and finished fourth behind gold medalist Lukáš Pollert of the Czech Republic.