Paddlers from Club Marítimo de Mahón close a successful season triumphing in the Nationals

The Spanish Sprint Canoeing Championship for Young Promises was held this past weekend in Trasona. This past weekend, the Spanish Sprint Canoeing Championship for Young Promises took place at the facilities of the Canoeing Federation of the Principality of Asturias in Trasona.

The Club Marítimo de Mahón fielded its best cadet paddlers in the only distance contested, 500 meters, in both K1 (single kayak) and K2 (double kayak) events. Irati Vidal won the gold medal in the PK3 500-meter event.

The competition kicked off on Saturday, July 19, with the K1 heats. Weather conditions started out good but worsened as the event progressed, causing significant delays at the start lines due to the difficulty of positioning the boats’ bows into the starting pods. Saturday afternoon saw the individual finals and the K2 heats, while the remaining semifinals and finals were held on Sunday.

In the men's cadet K1, Marcos Pons confirmed his level. After a confident semifinal where he narrowly missed the A-final, the young Mahón paddler proved his worth by convincingly winning the B-final and registering the fifth-best time in his category. Meanwhile, Bruno Pons showed marked improvement in his performance, just missing out on the semifinals in a tight cutoff where seven boats crossed the line within the same second. In the K2 event, the two young and relatively new Mahón paddlers couldn't make the cut. Although they were virtually inside the qualifying time during the first half of the heats, a technical error in the starting system caused a delay that led to a wind shift, favoring the later heats and impacting the results.

In the women’s category, Claudia Cook remains among the top national paddlers. As a seeded athlete, she skipped the heats and in the semifinal managed the race wisely to secure her place in the A-final, once again finishing among the top nine women in her category. In the final, however, she did not have her best race and placed eighth, yet she maintains a perfect record of reaching A-finals in all national events she has competed in so far. Irati Vidal, for her part, delivered her best performance yet by making it through the individual time trial for the first time in her career. After a tough semifinal, she qualified for the C-final, where she gave it her all with a perfect race strategy, finishing fourth. The two Mahón women also competed in the K2, feeling the pressure of replicating the medal they won at the Spanish Cup. This time, they narrowly missed the podium by just two tenths of a second, finishing fifth in a final that was both windy and tightly contested.

Marcos Pons and Claudia Cook also competed in the mixed K2, once again finishing among the best. After a brilliant heat that took them straight to the A-final, the Menorcan duo fought hard and secured a fifth-place finish, an impressive result considering their young age in the category, which leaves room for even more growth next season.

To top off the championship, Irati Vidal once again claimed gold in the PK3 500m category. Not only does she remain undefeated in this event, but she also continues to improve, establishing herself as a strong candidate for the national paracanoe team in the coming years.

With this competition, the young athletes of Club Marítimo de Mahón, coached by Dion López, close out a fantastic season and hint at the full potential they may unleash in 2026.