Kayak Singles, 1,000 metres, Men

Despite the absence of the reigning Olympic champion from Hungary, whose nation was represented by Géza Csapó, there was a strong field in the K-1 1000 event at the 1972 Summer Olympics. The most prominent was probably Oleksandr Shaparenko of the Soviet Union, who, among his many international accolades, was the reigning World and final European champion (the tournament was discontinued after 1969) and 1968 Olympic runner-up. Also present were Sweden’s Rolf Peterson and Denmark’s Erik Hansen, the 1960 and 1964 Olympic champions respectively (Hansen was also the 1968 bronze medalist). Grzegorz Śledziewski of Poland, meanwhile, was the most recent World bronze medalist. The opening heats were won by Shaparenko, Ladislav Souček of Czechoslovakia, and Jean-Pierre Burny of Belgium, while Hansen only survived to the next round after going through the repêchage. The Dane made up for this in the semi-finals, however, by setting an Olympic record, while the other heats were won by Csapó and Shaparenko. The final developed into a dash towards the finish line between Peterson and Shaparenko, which the latter won in Olympic record time, albeit by a margin of only 0.29 seconds, to claim gold. Peterson settled for silver while Csapó came in just over a second latter to take bronze. Hansen, meanwhile, struggled in the medal round and finished seventh in his fourth and final Olympics.