Belarusian rowers perform well at Canoe Sprint World Championships in Milan

Belarusian Marina Litvinchuk won three gold medals at the Milan event, including the K1 5,000m (the longest distance in the kayak singles) in 22 minutes and 36.06 seconds. She also came first in the 200m kayak pairs, partnering Margarita Makhneva, and took gold as part of her kayak four, in the 500m. This season, she’s also won victory at the 1st European Games in Baku, where she brilliantly covered the 5,000m singles and the 200m kayak pairs.


Sixth place and a ticket to the Rio Games went to the Beijing Olympic 1,000m canoe pair winners: brothers Alexander and Andrey Bogdanovich. They were behind Brazil’s Erlon De Souza Silva and Queiroz Dos Santos, who took gold, by just 1.917 seconds.

Olympic places have also been earned by our kayak four of Pavel Medvedev, Andrey Tsarikovich, Vitaly Belko and Roman Petrushenko, who finished 8th in the final K4 1,000m.


In the 5,000m canoe event, Belarusian Maxim Petrov — who had captured bronze in the С1 500m — failed to win. Meanwhile, Oleg Yurenya took bronze in the 5,000m kayak singles: gold in this long distance category went to Australia’s Kenny Wallace and silver was captured by Germany’s Max Hoff. Behind the two favourites, Oleg finished in 20 minutes and 11.91 seconds.

As a result of their performance in Milan, the Belarusian team captured 5 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze medals. Germany topped the overall rankings, with 13 medals. Second place went to Belarus (10) and Australia was third (8). Our national team won 12 Olympic places at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.