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In the women's kayak event, the best time in the first heat run was set by Marie Nemcova from Czechia, who is also the defending European champion in this event from 2023, when the championships was held in Skopje. Second place went to Laura Fontaine from France, who was just five hundredths of a second behind, while third place was taken by her compatriot Manon Hostens, this year’s European champion in the classic event. In the second heats run, Italian athlete Cecilia Panato came out on top, with a time slightly better than Nemcova’s from the first run.

 

The men’s canoe heats were won by Czech athlete Matej Vanek, who was the only competitor in the event to complete the course in under one minute, with a time of 59.21 seconds. He was followed by French paddler Pierre Troubady, who finished eight tenths of a second behind, and fellow Czech Ondrej Rolenc in third.

 

In the men's kayak, the Slovenian paddlers lived up to expectations after claiming the European team titles in both sprint and classic on Thursday. The best qualifier was current world champion and defending European champion in wildwater sprint canoeing, Anze Urankar. Just three hundredths of a second behind him was his teammate Nejc Znidarcic, one of the most successful wildwater paddlers of all time. Third place went to French paddler Maxence Barouh, 0.18 seconds behind.

 

In the women’s canoe event, Anna Retkova of Czechia recorded the fastest time on Friday, finishing 1.17 seconds ahead of home favourite Cecilia Panato. Third place in the heats went to France’s Laura Fontaine, the defending European champion in this event.

 

In the men's C2, the French teams once again claimed all top three positions. Correntin Combe and Clement Monjanel recorded the best time, followed by Manoel and Tanguy Roussin in second, and Nicolas Sauteur and Theo Viens in third.

 

The French also dominated the women’s C2 event. Elsa Gaubert and Eve Vitali-Guilbert were the fastest, finishing nearly two seconds ahead of the Italian duo Cecilia and Alice Panato. Katarina Kopunova and Petra Soskova from Slovakia came in third, trailing by just over three seconds.

 

The 2025 ECA Wildwater Canoeing European Championships will conclude on Saturday with the wildwater sprint canoeing finals, starting at 3 p.m. You can watch the livestream on the Canoe Europe YouTube channel.