Canadian Singles, Slalom, Women

This was the Olympic début for women’s C-1, replacing the men’s C-2. In addition to the officially qualified 17 paddlers, five other athletes competed, having already earned a quota in the Women’s K-1 event.

Jessica Fox of Australia was the clear favourite, and had campaigned for the C-1 discipline to be added to the Olympic programme to ensure full gender parity in the canoe events. The 27-year-old had previously won K-1 silver at London 2012, and bronze in both Rio, and Tokyo, the latter just two days before the inaugural C-1. Fox’s seven gold medals in individual events (four in C-1 and three in K-1) made her the most successful paddler, male or female, in the history of the World Championships. She also won a gold medal in the K-1 event at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics. Another medal contender was Andrea Herzog from Germany, the reigning world champion, and Mallory Franklin from Great Britain, the 2017 world champion.

In the preliminaries, Franklin and Herzog occupied the first two positions. Fox made two mistakes, finishing with only the fifth best qualifying time. In both the semis and final, Fox recorded the best times, with big margins over the second-best competitors. In the final, Fox finished her run error-free and with a time that would have placed her sixth in the men’s canoe final earlier in the week. Her time was also better than the winning time in the women’s kayak final two days earlier. Kayak times are almost always faster than those of canoe.

Eleven years after winning gold at the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) at Singapore in 2010, Fox made it back on top of an Olympic podium, as she clinched the first ever women’s C-1 canoe slalom title in Tokyo. Franklin won silver, and Herzog bronze. For both, it was the first Olympic medal. Fox took her medal tally to four and no other female paddler has won more than three individual Olympic medals as Fox also became the first athlete to win two individual medals at a single Games.