Maria dels Àngels Moreno makes history and becomes Europe’s triple champion

The Spanish team of Olympic Sprint has finished Europe’s Championship, achieving the second best result of their history. In the 25 editions that this competition has been celebrated under this denomination, only 2022’s, celebrated in Munich, had better results for our interests.

In this occasion, Spain has achieved 12 medals (four golds, four silvers and four bronzes), staying just up to one (in Munich it was 13 with six silvers and three bronzes) of this registry, although it is also that true that a higher number of fourth places have been achieved even though they don’t sum up. Still, they are very significant.

In this last journey of competition, the paddlers offered again a spectacular version of themselves to leave good results, worthy of framing, since summing up the finals of Europe’s Paracone Championship, nine medals, one gold, three silvers and five bronzes, were achieved,

The first journey was the one of María Corbera in the C1 500 test, being after Galician Carlos Arévalo, who did not let the opportunity of getting on the podium again in a Europe championship in the K1 200 test pass. Even though the two important medals of the journey arrived in the olympic tests of C2 500 male and female. In female, Maria dels Àngels Moreno, from Reial Club Nàutic Port de Pollença, and Viktoria Yarchevska made Spain’s hymn sound for the fourth time in this championship. In fact, the Balearic has made history, since this medal meant her third gold in the championship (C2 200 and C4 500 mixed), which turns her into the first Spanish paddler in the history of European championships to go home with three Europe Champion titles. It is also very important to highlight the boys’ performances, the duo formed by Daniel Grijalba and Adrián Sieiro, showed once again that they will keep fighting for many years in this test. They got silver and only the Italians achieved beating this ‘galaicomdrileña’ pair.

In the afternoon, the closure of the chamìonship was left for the tests of 5000 metres. María Corbera was the one who accomplished silver in C1 in the first final, but unfortunately more medals could not be achieved in the next. Jaime Duro (C1) as well as Estefanía Fernández (K1) were fourth and Walter Bouzan (K1) fifth.

It is important too to point out paddler Alex Graneri, from Real Club Náutico de Palma, who got silver in the K1 500 category.

Regarding Europe’s Paracanoe, the paddlers departed from Racice with four medals, which places them in second place in terms of the metals’ numbers, just behind the nine ones the British won. However, all of them were bronze. Today the medals of Higinio Rivero in VL2 200, Adrián Mosquera in VL3 200 and María Jiménez en KL3 200 were won, a final result that exceeds last year’s, and that could have been better, since Inés Felipe in VL2 200, achieved silver, though since it was just four countries in the starting line, its test was considered Europe’s Cup, and not Championship, so that metal could not be summed to the final chart of medals.

Definitely, the Spanish Olympic Sprint keeps enjoying excellent health. Even the year after the Games we have seen how the new talents that come behind keep contributing a lot towards the new years. We will see many of them compete in Portugal in July in Junior World’s Championship and Under23, and to others, in Senior World’s Championship in August, in Milan.

Regarding the results by points, Spain wins this classification with a total of 859, followed by Hungary with 808, and Ukraine with 666 points.

These are all the medals of Spain in this 25th edition of Europe’s Olympic Sprint Championship:

Gold

• C1 200- Pablo Graña
• C2 200- Victoriia Yarchevska, Maria del Angels Moreno
• C2 500- Victoriia Yarchevska, Maria del Angels Moreno (Olympic Distance)
• C4 500 Mixto: Maria del Angels Moreno, María Corbera, Adrián Sieiro, Daniel Grijalba

Silver

• K1 500- Alex Graneri
• C2 500- Daniel Grijalba, Adrián Sieiro (Olympic Distance)
• K4 500- Sara Ouzande, Lucía Val, Estefanía Fernandez, Barbara Pardo (Olympic Distance)
• C1 5000- María Corbera

Bronze

• K1 200- Carlos Arévalo
• K1 1000- Laura Pedruelo
• C1 200- Victoriia Yarchevska (Olympic Distance)
• C1 5000 – María Corbera

Paracanoe

Bronze

• KL3 200 – Juan Antonio Valle
• VL2 200 – Higinio Rivero
• VL3 200 – Adrián Mosquera
• KL3 200 – María Jiménez