Kayaker Igor Trunov, who represents the southern FGC "Chemist", became the world champion in the four-person competition in the distance of 500 m, which is an Olympic type of programme.
He was accompanied on the pedestal by Oleh Kukharyk (Poltava), Dmytro Danylenko (Vinnytsia) and Ivan Semikin (Kyiv). The winning time of the Ukrainian crew is 1.20.19. This is the first Olympic gold medal for men's kayak in Ukraine and, in general, the first award in the Olympic discipline for kayakers. The crew was prepared by Mykola Kremer, a specialist and head coach of the Ukrainian national team, who was a two-time winner of the World Cup.
The Ukrainian four won the previous race and went straight to the final, which, as expected, was very tense. Suffice it to say that after the first half of the distance, the top eight was in the range of one second (!), And the Ukrainians in this company were second with a lag of 0.5 seconds behind the Belarusians. However, they passed the second half 0.4 seconds faster than the first, which was the key to historic success.
Igor, together with Maria Kichasova-Skoryk, also took 6th place in the mixed doubles competition in the distance of 200 m.
For Igor Trunov, this gold medal became the first at the world championships. Earlier, he, representing the Odessa region, twice became a winner of the World Youth Championship.
This is the third gold medal of rowers in Odessa region in the post-Soviet period. Before that, the world champion was twice a Southern canoeist, two-time Olympic champion Yuri Cheban.
