Upset Gold for Chelsea Roussiekan as Die Finals 2026 Crown Germany's Canoe Champions on the Maschsee
- Published
- 2026-07-27T09:33:26+00:00
Germany's biggest multi-sport showcase, Die Finals 2026 Hannover, closed on Sunday with the loudest surprise saved for last: 22-year-old Chelsea-Lynn Roussiekan of Rheintreue Düsseldorf beat World Cup winner Pauline Jagsch by 0.13 seconds to take the women's kayak title. Over four days on the Maschsee, from 23 to 26 July, German championship golds were decided in canoe sprint, paracanoe, stand up paddling and speed canoe polo — all in a spectator-friendly head-to-head parallel sprint format raced over roughly 160 metres, right in the middle of the Maschseefest crowds.
Overview
The canoe programme produced ten parallel-sprint champions plus two speed canoe polo titles. The full roll of honour, with official winning times from the medal races:
| Event | Gold | Club | Winning time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kayak women | Chelsea-Lynn Roussiekan | Rheintreue Düsseldorf | 31.77 |
| Kayak men | Max Lemke | KC Potsdam | 27.51 |
| Canoe women | Maike Jakob | KC Potsdam | 36.31 |
| Canoe men | Nico Pickert | SC DHfK Leipzig | 30.56 |
| K2 mixed | Paulina Paszek / Max Lemke | HKC Hannover / KC Potsdam | 26.44 |
| C2 mixed | Maike Jakob / Nico Pickert | KC Potsdam / SC DHfK Leipzig | 30.89 |
| Paracanoe K1 | Anja Adler | SV Halle | 40.90 |
| Paracanoe Va'a | Maik Polte | SV Halle | 49.06 |
| SUP men | Normen Weber | Kanu Schwaben Augsburg | 36.15 |
| SUP women | Skadi Langbein | WPH Berlin | 46.40 |
| Speed polo women | WSF Liblar | — | 5:4 vs Duisburg |
| Speed polo men | KSVH Berlin | — | 8:2 vs Wanderfalke Essen |
Die Finals bundle German championships across more than a dozen sports into one televised weekend, and Hannover 2026 gave canoeing a stage it rarely gets at home: knockout brackets, two boats at a time, ARD and ZDF cameras, and the opening ceremony shared with the Maschseefest on Thursday at 17:27. The German Canoe Federation (DKV) leaned into the format — heats, semifinals and two-boat medal races replaced the classic timed lanes, and the racing rewarded pure starting speed.
The numbers back up the show. The fastest run of the entire weekend came not from a single but from the mixed K2, where Paulina Paszek and Max Lemke stopped the clock at 26.44 — four tenths clear of Pauline Jagsch and Max Rendschmidt (26.87). And the tightest margins came exactly where the drama was: 0.13 seconds in the women's kayak final, 0.10 in the bronze race behind it.
An upset three weeks in the making
The DKV itself called it "Überraschungsgold" — surprise gold. Chelsea-Lynn Roussiekan started the women's kayak final as the outsider against Pauline Jagsch of SC Berlin Grünau, fresh off a World Cup victory this season. Roussiekan won it on the water: 31.77 to 31.90.
"Damit habe ich überhaupt nicht gerechnet. Das ist einfach unglaublich" — "I never expected this. It's simply incredible," the Düsseldorf paddler said afterwards. The label of outsider deserves a closer look, though. Three weeks before Hannover, Roussiekan took U23 silver in the K2 500 m with Estella Damm at the ICF Junior and U23 Canoe Sprint World Championships in Halifax (1-5 July), where the German team collected 15 medals. Her final in Halifax was decided in 1:45.60 — a podium at world level against her own age group. Nor is she new to the national podium: at the German championships in 2021 she already owned K1 200 m bronze and silver medals in the K2 200 m, K2 500 m and K4 500 m. Sunday was less a bolt from the blue than a first senior breakthrough arriving right on schedule.
Behind the top two, the bronze went to the home favourite: Paulina Paszek of HKC Hannover won the small final in 31.79 against Lena Röhlings (31.89) — a time that would have pushed the champions hard. On another day, in another bracket, the podium order might have looked very different; that is exactly the charm and the cruelty of knockout sprinting.
Doubles and duels
Three athletes left the Maschsee with two golds each. Max Lemke, a three-time Olympic champion, dominated the men's kayak final against Tom Liebscher-Lucz of KC Dresden — 27.51 to 28.15 — a day after winning the mixed K2 with Paszek. "Das ist eine tolle Location hier in Hannover," Lemke said — a great venue, with an atmosphere that carried the racing. The bronze stayed in Potsdam: Leon Michael Reckzeh beat Max Rendschmidt 27.73 to 28.21 in the small final. Athletes of KC Potsdam featured in four of the ten parallel-sprint golds — both kayak titles plus Maike Jakob's two canoe wins came at least in part in Potsdam colours.
The canoe events belonged to Maike Jakob and Nico Pickert. Jakob won the women's final in 36.31 ahead of her Potsdam club-mate Carlotta Loske (37.68) — a result with extra bite, because Loske arrived in Hannover as the freshly crowned U23 world champion in the C1 500 m from Halifax. Bronze went to 18-year-old Cheyenne Heidl of Rheinbrüder Karlsruhe, who won the small final in 37.23. A day earlier Jakob and Pickert had taken the mixed C2 together in 30.89, with a 0.70-second margin over Loske and Moritz Adam — Jakob noting with a grin that women's canoe rarely gets to travel at that speed.
Pickert's singles gold carried a story of its own. The SC DHfK Leipzig paddler beat his training partner Peter Kretschmer — Olympic champion of London 2012 — by 30.56 to 31.01, and immediately did the arithmetic: "3 zu 3 steht es jetzt zwischen uns beiden in den Duellen" — the head-to-head between the two Leipzig canoeists now stands at three wins apiece. The bronze went to Moritz Adam (30.64 in the small final), whose winning time in that race was faster than Kretschmer's in the final — knockout racing, again, giving no prizes for hypotheticals. In the mixed C2 bronze race, Marie-Sophie Syskowski and Conrad-Robin Scheibner — who swapped boat positions at the last minute — edged Luise Lämmel and David Töpel by five hundredths, 32.12 to 32.17.
In the mixed K2, the Hannover crowd got the result it wanted: local hero Paszek with Lemke in 26.44, ahead of Jagsch/Rendschmidt. The bronze race was almost as quick — Finja Hermanussen of KC Limmer and Jonas Borkowski of KG Essen clocked 26.89 to beat the all-Dresden boat of Nele Reinwardt and Liebscher-Lucz (27.13).
Paracanoe, SUP and speed polo
The paracanoe races used a pursuit format: staggered starts calculated from each athlete's classification, so that women and men across KL and VL classes race each other and the first paddler across the line wins. It made for genuinely open racing — and for one of the athletes of the weekend. Anja Adler of SV Halle won the kayak final in 40.90 ahead of Ivo Kilian of Hallescher KC (46.50), a day after taking bronze in the Va'a outrigger. "I train both and at some competitions I have to switch back and forth within two hours. I've raced both since 2017," she explained. The Va'a title went to her club-mate Maik Polte in 49.06, ahead of Moritz Berthold of ESV Lok RAW Cottbus (50.21) — the same Berthold whom Adler had chased down to within half a second in Friday's semifinal despite giving him a head start.
On the boards, the men's SUP crown stayed with 39-year-old Normen Weber of Kanu Schwaben Augsburg, who defended his title in 36.15 ahead of Marlon Daskiran of WPH Berlin (36.58). "It gets harder every year, but the youngsters push me," Weber laughed. The women's title on Sunday stayed with WPH Berlin: Skadi Langbein won her third consecutive Finals gold in 46.40, well clear of Vivien Franke (52.27).
Speed canoe polo — a shortened, high-tempo version of the discipline — delivered a first and a three-peat. In the women's final on Thursday, WSF Liblar beat 1. MKC Duisburg 5:4 for the club's first German championship title at their Finals debut, with PSC Coburg taking bronze 3:1 over KRM Essen. On Saturday the men of KSVH Berlin routed KG Wanderfalke Essen 8:2 for their third consecutive Finals title, while 1. MKC Duisburg edged KRM Essen 7:6 in the tournament's highest-scoring match for bronze.
What's next
For the sprint squad, the Maschsee was the last big domestic stop before the season's main event: the ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships in Poznań (26-30 August) — Lemke, Jagsch, Paszek and the paracanoe medallists from Halle all race with Worlds selection in their calendars, and the Poznań regatta course sits barely 300 kilometres east of Hannover, promising a strong German travelling support.
The polo clubs have an even bigger date circled: the ICF Canoe Polo World Championships in Duisburg start on 15 September — a home Worlds for the German polo scene, with the Duisburg and Essen clubs that filled the Maschsee brackets providing the backbone of the national squads. The SUP racers can look to the ICF Stand Up Paddling World Cup in Agios Nikolaos from 20 September. And Die Finals themselves move on: the 2027 edition heads to Stuttgart.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won the kayak titles at Die Finals 2026?
Chelsea-Lynn Roussiekan (Rheintreue Düsseldorf) won the women's final in 31.77 ahead of Pauline Jagsch (31.90); Max Lemke (KC Potsdam) won the men's final in 27.51 ahead of Tom Liebscher-Lucz (28.15).
What is the parallel sprint format used at Die Finals?
Two boats race head-to-head on a short course of roughly 160 metres, through heats, semifinals and two-boat medal races. It is a knockout show format — win your lane or go home — designed for spectators and television rather than championship-distance racing.
Was Roussiekan's gold really a surprise?
The DKV called it surprise gold, and against a World Cup winner it was. But three weeks earlier Roussiekan had won U23 world championship silver in the K2 500 m with Estella Damm in Halifax, and she owned four medals from the 2021 German championships. The margin in Hannover — 0.13 seconds — was narrow, the pedigree was not.
Is the Kretschmer era in German canoe coming to an end?
Peter Kretschmer, Olympic champion in 2012, took silver behind his Leipzig training partner Nico Pickert, 31.01 to 30.56 — and Moritz Adam's winning time in the bronze race (30.64) was also faster than Kretschmer's final run. Pickert himself put the career head-to-head at 3-3, so "era over" is premature — but the younger Leipzig canoeist now holds the national title.
Does a 160-metre knockout tell us anything about Poznań?
Directly, little — the World Championships are raced over 200, 500 and 1000 metres in timed lanes. But the names at the front were the expected ones: triple Olympic champion Lemke won everything he entered, and the women's kayak podium was separated by 0.13 seconds across the final and barely 0.02 between the final and the small final — depth that bodes well for German boat selection.
Which club had the best Finals?
KC Potsdam athletes featured in four of the ten parallel-sprint golds (both kayak titles and both of Maike Jakob's canoe wins involved Potsdam athletes), while SV Halle swept the two paracanoe golds through Anja Adler and Maik Polte.
When and where are the next Finals?
Die Finals 2027 will be held in Stuttgart. Before that, the international season culminates in Poznań (sprint and paracanoe Worlds, 26-30 August) and Duisburg (canoe polo Worlds, from 15 September).
Four days on the Maschsee delivered exactly what a championship crammed into a city festival should: fast, loud, unforgiving racing — and a new name at the top of German women's kayaking. Whether Chelsea-Lynn Roussiekan can carry the momentum of Hannover into senior international waters is now one of the more interesting German storylines on the road to the World Championships in Poznań.
Sources: official DKV reports from Die Finals 2026 (kanu.de, 23-26 July 2026); official results, IMAS Sportsystems (results.imas-sport.com); ARD/sportschau.de format guide.