Canadian Doubles, Slalom, Men

Twin brothers Pavol and Peter Hochschorner of Slovakia were the defending Olympic champions in the C-2 slalom and, since the 2000 Games, they had won the 2002 European and World Championships and been bronze medalists at the 2003 Worlds. Germany’s Marcus Becker and Stefan Henze were the reigning World Champions, while the Czech Republic’s Jaroslav Volf and Ondřej Štěpánek were the most recent European champions and World runners-up. Another Czech duo, Marek Jiras and Tomáš Máder, the 2000 Olympic bronze medalists, were the 2002 silver and bronze medalists at the European and World Championships respectively. The Hochschorner brothers were the top qualifiers at the 2004 Summer Olympics, with Volf and Štěpánek third behind Great Britain’s Stuart Bowman and Nick Smith. Becker and Henze, meanwhile, were fifth, while Juras and Máder were eighth. Both Juras and Máder and Bowman and Smith were eliminated after the first run in the final, while the Hochschorner brothers again topped the standings and Volf and Štěpánek were third, this time behind France’s Philippe Quemerais and Yann le Pennec. Becker and Henze were fourth after the first round, but won the second round with enough points to earn them the silver medal behind the Slovakians, who were second in this portion of the competition, but had enough points to defend their Olympic title. Volf and Štěpánek’s fourth-placed run was sufficient to keep them in the bronze medal position over Christian Bahmann and Michael Senft of Germany, the latter of whom was a 1996 Olympic bronze medalist. This was the second of the Hochschorner brothers’ three concsecutive gold medals in the C-2 slalom, as they would go on to win the tournament again in 2008.

Silver medalist Stefan Henze was a German canoe coach at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In the early days of the Olympics he was riding in a taxi that was involved in a head-on crash. He sustained significant head injuries and died only a few days later.