Kayak Singles, 500 metres, Women

East Germany was the reigning Olympic champion in the women’s K-1 500 and had won the event at the last five editions of the World Champions. The nation sent Birgit Fischer, who was at the beginning of her career and had only two World Championship medals, gold in the 1978 and 1979 K-4 500, a far cry from the 38 that she would hold by the time of her retirement. She began to show some of that future promise by winning her opening heat and the medal round with relative ease, becoming the youngest Olympic canoeing champion (she would later earn the title as the oldest in 2004). An even lesser-known Bulgarian, Vanya Gesheva, was never far behind Fischer and took the silver medal, although she had to battle the Soviet Union’s Antonina Melnikova for it, emerging victorious by only 0.18 seconds and leaving her challenger with bronze.