In the women's event, Australia's Naomi Fox won gold, followed by France's Angele Hug with silver, and bronze went to Great Britain's Kimberly Woods.

Fox is coming from one of the most famous paddling families, trained by her mother, Myiriam Fox, and her sister Jessica is an athlete in Paris, too. She debuted in 2015 World Cup in Krakow Poland and won bronze at the U23 World Championships in Ivrea, Italy.

In the men's event, gold went to New Zealand's Finn Buth, silver to Great Britain's Joseph Clark, and bronze to Germany's Noah Hegge. Buth is set for his Olympic debut at Paris 2024. The K1 reserve for Tokyo 2020 started paddling at the age of nine and has constantly improved over the years. 

He has a Bachelor's in Sports and Exercise Science from Massey University, and won a kayak cross World Cup silver on the Paris 2024 Olympic course in 2023.

New discipline

Since its debut at the Games at Munich 1972, canoe slalom has always included four events at the Games. Up until Rio 2016 those were men's canoe singles (C-1), men's kayak singles (K-1), women's kayak singles (K-1) and men's canoe doubles (C-2) until the latter was substituted for women's canoe singles (C-1) at Tokyo 2020. Kayak Cross is a sport that is only nine years old, but its popularity and excitement has made it onto the Olympic programme in Paris.

The start of the events takes place on a ramp more than two metres above the water's surface. There, four identical plastic (PVC) kayaks slide down the ramp to begin a descent, lasting no more than a minute, in which everything, or almost everything, is allowed.

As in the Olympic Slalom, the participants have to pass through the buoys of the circuit to overcome up to eight gates (six uphill and two downhill) and perform a skimming (360º rotational turn of the canoe in the water, which means that the head disappears inside the channel for a couple of seconds), but unlike in the individual events, contact with the gates and other boats is allowed, although skipping a gate - or not turning the kayak at any point on the course, leads to disqualification.

Not only is there this penalty in a Kayak Cross race, but a paddler can also be cautioned by the judges if the start is interrupted, paddled dangerously or if the kayak is not completed within the allotted area. Kayak Cross races are so volatile that it is difficult to predict a favourite for each of the descents, they are 'neck and neck' races between the participants and where leading at the beginning of the race is not synonymous with victory.

In terms of the competition system, first there are individual time trial descents where the best times go through to the elimination rounds, then there is a preliminary and from there it's on to the quarter-final rounds, where the first two of each descent qualify for the next series and the last two are eliminated. This goes on until the final, where the top three finish on the podium.