The European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) is a biennial multi-sport event for youth athletes from the 48 member countries of the association of European Olympic Committees. Summer edition of EYOF, which was held for the first time in Brussels in 1991, will once more also hold the canoe sprint events and athletes from 33 countries will be part of the canoeing competition.
Young athletes will compete at the 200 metres and 500 meters distances in K1M, K1W, C1M, C1W, K2M, K2W, C2 mix and K4 mix events. The first stage of each event will be qualification which will give the names of competitors who will advance to the heats. The best from the heats will then proceed to the semi-final and final A or B in the end.
The first races will start on Tuesday when qualifications and heats in the 500 metres events will be held. Semi-finals and finals A and B in the mentioned events will follow on Wednesday. The same programme will also be in use for the 200 metres events. On Friday we will see the qualifications and heats in K1M, K1W, C1M, C1W, K2M, K2W, C2 mix and K4 mix 200 metres events. The semi-finals and finals A and B will be held on Saturday.
Canoe sprint competitions will see athletes from Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
Canoe Sprint was part of the EYOF already in 2005 in Lignano, Italy. Many top level athletes, who since then participated and won medals at Olympic Games, World and European Championships and also Paraylmpic Games, competed at the European Youth Olympic festival twelve years ago. Among them Fernando Pimenta, Marko Novaković, Vitaliy Bialko, Jessica Walker, Miroslav Kirchev and Markus Mendy Swoboda to name just a few.
Official EYOF website: http://gyor2017.hu/en_GB/kayak-canoe-2
24.7.2017
