Kayak Tudense and Breogán O Grove, clubs taking the main titles at Galicia regional Winter Championships

Left to right: Millán, Rodríguez, Piña and Alonso. Image: Aurora Santomé

It was held in the dam of Verducido (Galicia) the Galician Winter Championship. As usual , great participation in all categories in a cool, windy day, which caused a little problem at the starts, especially the K1 Senior Men, as explained below.

As in all the championships being held these days prior to national Spanish Winter Championships in Seville , there were many races for all the categories throughout Saturday, beginning at U12 and preceding the main categories.

In the women's race, brilliant start by the Sprint specialists, who ended up taking the medals. The paddlers from Breogán O Grove, Natalia and Laura García, could not avoid the Kayak Tudense club setting two paddlers on the podium, with Ana Varela arriving alone in first and Carla Pérez getting bronze. Between them, the 2013 champion Tania Fernández (Fluvial de Lugo), who took silver.

Canoe paddlers duet of Breogán O Grove in the C1 race by Antonio Campos and Diego Romero. The silver medalists in C2 at last marathon worlds demonstrated their superiority in the medium distance, being the only ones to race under, and comfortably, the 25 minutes barrier. In the final sprint, Campos claimed gold and Romero silver. 40 seconds later, David Costa (Kayak Tudense) went for bronze leading a long line of canoeists with only seconds between them, staying out of the podium world marathon champions Graña and Garrido, among others.

Finally, the start of the K1 men played its role in the final results. The strong diagonal wind and therefore the difficulty to keep the distance between boats, caused nerves among the paddlers and at the time of the "ready, go" there were some differences between paddlers who had already given a couple of strokes and those who didn't. This caused a good amount of paddlers to find themselves with one minute penalty at the finish line, which varied considerably the official results. And first to suffer it was current European and World Marathon Champion Iván Alonso, who leaded most of the race in a group along with other three teammates from Kayak Tudense: Diego Piña, Victor Javier Rodriguez and Rubén Millán. After not given much rest in some of the turns, the group broke up in the last short lap, entering Alonso the finish line seconds ahead of Piña, and then Rodríguez and Millán, with some seconds in between each other. In fact, the first sprint was for fifth place. But then came penalties and Alonso was among them, so he went back to fourth place and his three mates then stepped on the podium. So happened to Antonio Palmas (C.P. Vilaboa), winner of the sprint in the second group, so eventually Roi Rodríguez and Diego Domínguez (Tudense) were 5th and 6th and completed the recital of the paddlers from Tui.

In this link you can see the results of all categories up to senior. And in this one, the Masters .