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PARIS: After narrowly missing out on gold at the Tokyo Olympics, Germany’s Jacob Schopf put in a strong performance in the men’s double canoe 500m final on Friday to finish on the podium alongside new partner Max Lemke.
The two recently teamed up to compete and proved to be a match made in heaven, their powerful strokes and rock-solid rhythm defeating silver medalists Bence Nadas and Sandor Totka of Hungary, while Jean van der Westhuyzen and Tom Green of Australia took bronze.
“It’s perfect revenge,” Schopf told Reuters in an interview, ending three years of speculation about the 2021 canoe double 1,000m race with a gold medal.
“To this day I remember (Tokyo), I was a little bit nervous, but once we got off to a perfect start, I (started) feeling like it was a perfect match.”
His teammate Lemke also believed that the outcome of the game had been decided during the opening ceremony at the Marne-sur-Marine Stadium in Wells-sur-Marne.
“We had a perfect start and the first 250 metres were very good – we were ahead 250 metres from the start so we were just thinking about getting the boat across the finish line and we did it so we are very happy,” he said with a broad smile.
With the gold medal within reach, neither athlete worried about getting injured due to fatigue.
“In training, there are no spectators and no other boats pushing you to the limit, so I think only the best athletes could have reached this level and achieved such a result in the final,” Lemke said.
“We did that today and I’m really proud that we did it together as a team.”
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