Rio de Janeiro: Hungarian kayaker Danuta Kozak won her third gold medal of the Games on Saturday, a rare feat that has been matched by just two canoe sprint athletes before her.
Kozak and teammates Gabriella Szabo, Tamara Csipes and Krisztina Fazekas-Zur won the women’s K-4 500-metre sprint in 1:31.482, ahead of silver medal-winning Germany and bronze-winning Belarus.
The victory is the latest in Hungary’s history of dominance in the sport. Hungary’s women won the event at the 2012 Games and took silver in the K-4 at the 2008, 2004 and 2000 Olympics.
Kozak is the first woman to win three gold medals in canoe sprint in a single Olympic Games and the third athlete in the sport overall, after Vladimir Parfenovic of the Soviet Republic in 1980 and Ian Ferguson of New Zealand in 1984.
If that feat sounds unbelievable, Kozak herself has yet to process it.
“I’m very happy,” Kozak said after the race. “I think I need some time until I believe it.” Kozak is now one of her country’s most decorated Olympians, having won five gold medals and a silver. Her two other gold medals in Rio were in the women’s K-2 500m on Tuesday and K-1 500m on Thursday.
Liam Heath brought home Britain’s 25th gold medal on Saturday, winning the men’s K-1 200-metre sprint in a neck-and-neck battle with France’s Maxime Beaumont.
Heath, 32, claimed victory in 35.197 seconds, just 0.165 seconds faster than silver medallist Beaumont.
Spain’s Saul Craviotto and Germany’s Ronald Rauhe tied for bronze, with identical finishing times down to the thousandth of a second.
Heath said he was overjoyed by the results.
“It’s an absolutely incredible feeling. Hard to put into words,” he said. The British paddler won silver in the men’s K-2 200m race on Thursday. In the 2012 Games, he took bronze in that same event.
Germany’s Sebastian Brendel and Jan Vandrey won the men’s double canoe 1,000m gold medal.
The German duo roared past Brazilians Isaquias Queiroz dos Santos and Erlon de Souza Silva, who set the pace for three quarters of the race but settled for silver ahead of Ukraine’s Dmytro Ianchuk and Taras Mischchuk.
It marked Brendel’s second victory over Queiroz in Rio, after his victory in the single canoe 1,000m on Tuesday. But Queiroz, with his silver and a single canoe 200m bronze became the first Brazilian in any sport to win three medals in one Games.
