Canoe Sprint at the 2020 Summer Olympics

The sprint events were staged at Sea Forest Waterway, a regatta venue for rowing and canoeing situated in Tokyo Bay. Similar to the canoe slalom, the disciplines in sprint were moved to gender equality. The men’s C-1 200 metres and K-2 200 metres were replaced with women’s C-1 200 metres and C-2 500 metres. This was the first time that women could compete in canoe. In addition, the men’s K-4 1000 metres was replaced with a shorter race of 500 metres.

NOCs were limited to six men and six women positions in kayaking, and three men and three women in canoeing, which meant a country could enter up to 18 athletes overall. Qualification enabled a NOC to participate, but not necessarily the paddler who gained the place. An important difference from the previous Games was that the countries could nominate up to two athletes per discipline, if their overall quota allowed it. A record of 51 countries competed (the previous highest was 50 countries at Beijing in 2008), with Belize making its Olympic début in this sport. Former Iranian paddler Saeid Fazloula competed in the IOC’s refugee team.

New Zealand’s Lisa Carrington´s aim was to win four canoe sprint gold medals but she managed only three, but it still made her a five-time gold medallist. She won the K-1 200 metres for the third consecutive Olympics, a feat not achieved since the legendary Swede Gert Fredriksson won the last of his K-1 1000 gold medals at Melbourne in 1956. In winning the women’s K-4, Danuta Kozák of Hungary added one more to her collection of five gold medals.

Like Spain’s Teresa Portela and Slovakia’s Erik Vlcek, Germany’s Ronald Rauhe competed at his sixth Olympics in Tokyo, having made his début at Sydney in 2000. He also won his fifth Olympic medal in five different Games, missing out only at London 2012. In Tokyo, Hungary was the most successful nation with six medals, three of which were a gold. New Zealand led by Carrington, China, and the former superpower Germany, each finished with three medals.