President of the ICF Considers the World Championships a Great Success

Jose Perurena Lopez, President of the International Canoe Federation (ICF) and Dr. Etele Baráth, President of the Hungarian Canoe Federation both consider the Olympic Qualifier ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships by MOL a great success.

"I'm absolutely content. The finals over the weekend took place in front of a crowd of 15,000 people, and more than 400 correspondents reported from the event, both are record numbers in the history of canoeing", said the Spanish leader of the ICF at the international press conference. "Television coverage debuted a lot of cutting edge technological solutions making the broadcast all the more enjoyable."

Mr. Perurena highlighted that based on past years' World Championships, most steps ahead were taken in women's canoe, mainly thanks to the three-week training camp organised by the ICF and held in Hungary prior to the World Championships. He added that paracanoe racing was also a novelty, which is also extremely important as paracanoe will debut on the Olympic programme at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games.

"This was a special event. Because of the World Championships also being an Olympic Qualifier, and also because of the record number of entries. In the future, however, a new system has to be worked out for how to manage more than a 1000 of athletes and 3000 accredited people", added Mr. Perurena also thanking the Hungarian organisers for staging the World Championships just within a year of being granted the right to organise the World Championships instead of the original venue in France. The ICF will finalise the allocation of the Olympic quotas by Friday.

Dr. Etele Baráth highlighted the crowd on site in his address. He reported 40,000 fans to have visited the regatta course on Maty-ér during the World Championships. Dr. Baráth also believes that fans were very fair as they have not only cheered for the Hungarian competitors, but for each and every athlete were welcomed by outstanding enthusiasm and applause. As a bit of curiosity, Dr. Baráth mentioned that in the extreme heat, 86,000 bottles of water were consumed on the regatta course by Saturday morning.

"The Hungarian team showed a better performance during the preparation period than they did at the World Championships, especially in the 200m events. At the same time, the team has a lot of young competitors, and this is very promising for the future", said Dr. Baráth evaluating the performance of the Hungarian team.

Dr. Baráth also mentioned that it is great news for canoeing sport that contrary to the past, lots of nations won gold (15), won medals (25), and got into the finals.

"I also would like to express heartfelt thanks to the ICF that we could organise this year's World Championships", concluded Dr. Baráth.

(Source: MTI - Hungarian National Press Agency)