Hungary Secures 12 Canoe Sprint Quotas for 2020 Olympics

The paddlers of the host nation won five gold, four silver and three bronze medals at the 2019 Canoe Sprint World Championships organized in the southeastern Hungarian city of Szeged, thus finishing third on the medal table behind Belarus and Germany. The sporting event attracted about 1,100 competitors from 101 countries. On the Hungarian team, women kayakers delivered the best performance, winning four of the seven disciplines and finishing third in two others. Tamara Csipes, a two-time world champion in 2010, won the 1,000-meter individual event and she was also a member of the quartet to cross the finish line first in the K-4 500-meter race. The 5^th Hungarian gold was achieved in the men’s 1,000-meter individual race by Bálint Kopasz, who defeated the reigning world champion and 2012 Olympic silver medalist Fernando Pimenta from Portugal.

The Hungarian performance means that the country has secured the right to participate in 12 kayak and canoe sprint disciplines at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. In disciplines where they failed to do so, Hungarian paddlers will have more opportunities to qualify at competitions to be held next year.

In the paracanoe events, Hungary's Péter Pál Kiss also won a gold medal.