ICF Canoe Sprint Committee activities

It has been a great period for Canoe Sprint as the season gets underway. Last month saw the final inspection of the Canoe Sprint venue for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games which looks spectacular and I cannot wait for the Games to begin.

Here is a breakdown of my activities over the past three months.

1. ICF Board of Directors meeting in London, England

The Working Group for new Olympic Qualification System presented the direction to the Board of Directors. The ICF Canoe Sprint Committee is continuing to work closely with this Working Group. We had the good discussion for rule changes of our competition rules to make our sports more attractive and fair. The Board of Directors selected future host cities of the ICF major events with our World Cups in 2026 heading to Bratislava and Szeged. The full story can be found here.

2. The ACC Asian Canoe Sprint Championships and Asian Olympic qualifier in Tokyo, Japan

The event took place at the Sea Forest Waterway which was used during Tokyo 2020. It is very important to organise major events like this in Tokyo and make use of such great facilities. The atmosphere was fantastic. I am sure that all the participants were happy and for many of them it was their first time on the course. When we had the Olympic Games in Tokyo, it was during the pandemic whereas this time we had so many spectators in the grandstand which was amazing. We also had 800 volunteers – this is a great number.

3. European Olympic Qualifier, Paracanoe World Championships and ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup in Szeged, Hungary

It was great to open the season in Szeged who did a tremendous job to stage three fantastic events. The results of all three events are on our website.

4. Inspection of Paris 2024 venue.

Our venue inspections and discussions with Paris 2024 were very fruitful. The preparations towards the Games are going very well. A lot of important things such as facilities, technologies, sports presentation and services to the teams were discussed. Paris 2024 are doing a great job with the ICF to welcome teams. It will be outstanding to have such huge numbers of spectators. We will have more than 20,000 there. We also had good discussions about generating our sports presentation. I am sure the sports presentation in Paris will make our spectators and the people watching on TV more excited and have more fun.

By Toshi Furuya, Chair of the ICF Canoe Sprint Committee