Renata Csay steps into legend at Rome. Campos and Alonso, new marathon world champions in C1 and K1

This is the article we have written in colabroation with Sportscene.tv, where you can read it and see all the results archive and pictures of the championships. Check it at this link.

Renata Csay (HUN) this morning at Rome

This morning Hungarian legend Renata Csay won her 11th world title in the K1 Senior Women's race, becoming the most decorated marathon paddler ever, just surpassing another legend, Spanish Manuel Busto, who has ten golds so far. In the other two races Spain has showed its potential in this discipline by taking another two gold medals; Manuel Antonio 'Tono' Campos is the new world champion in C1 Senior Men and Iván Alonso is the same in K1 Men.

Races started in fair weather with an exciting starting list, where marathon experts met some sprinters after finishing their Sprint season in London. Marathon paddlers draw on their valuable experience and today was not an exception.

K1 Women

In the women's race, we could see from the start that, with Renata Csay (HUN) around, other contestants were only limited to go for silver.

The 35 year old mother of two refused a tactical race from the very start and just paddled away doing the whole 6 laps on her own. With a firm pace, seconds started to pull away from the chasing group, composed of locals Stefania Cicali and Anna Alberti (ITA), London 2012 Olympian Henriette Engel Hansen (DEN), Berenike Faldum (BUL) and Krizstina Bedoecs (AUT). Already on the second lap, they split and only Cicali and Faldum remained chasing Csay, while Hansen, Bedoecs and Alberti stayed together in the third group. Not much followed after that, with Csay widening the gap to one and a half minutes, so the interest was in the fight for silver between Cicali and Faldum. The Italian tried twice at the portages to escape, but she was caught again in the water. On the third attempt and with one lap to go, Stefania Cicali managed to assure second place while Renata Csay, already touching gold, slowed her pace down a bit.