Luzan's four golds crown a Montemor championship of dynasties

Published

2026-06-15T12:13:56+00:00

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PaddleStats

Liudmyla Luzan walked off the water at Montemor-o-Velho with four gold medals, and that single line tells you most of what you need to know about the 2026 European Canoe Sprint Championships. From 11 to 14 June, on the restored High Performance Centre course that had been wrecked by flooding only four months earlier, roughly 600 athletes from 39 nations turned the Portuguese venue into a procession of dynasties — the Ukrainian canoe queen at the front of it, with Martin Fuksa, Emese Kőhalmi and Pauline Jagsch each completing doubles of their own, and a 20-year-old Pole, Alex Borucki, gatecrashing the kayak elite with the loudest single result of the week.

Overview

If you scan that table for a single national story, you will not find one — and that is the point of Montemor. The titles spread across the continent, but they clustered around a handful of names and a handful of fleets. Hungary took the men's K4 500 m in 1:18.500 and left with the deepest all-round haul, with Kőhalmi alone responsible for two of its golds and Zsófia Csorba adding the women's C1 5000 m. Spain answered through the boats: the K4 women's crew of Sara Ouzande, Lucía Val and Bárbara Pardo won in 1:31.576, the C4 Mix took gold in 1:38.098, and Carlos Arévalo added the K1 men's 200 m in 34.103. Germany owned the flat-water kayak finals that matter most for the Olympic cycle, sweeping K2 men, K2 women and the women's K1 500 m.

And then there was Ukraine, which produced no fleet at all — just the standout individual of the regatta. Liudmyla Luzan raced five finals and won four of them, a return so emphatic that the rest of the women's canoe program effectively reorganised itself around the question of who would take silver. The other narratives — Fuksa's C1 double, Kőhalmi's distance double, Jagsch's German double, Borucki's contested breakthrough — are all real and all worth telling. But Montemor was, first and last, Luzan's championship.

Star of the regatta: Luzan

Five finals, four golds. Liudmyla Luzan opened her account in the C1 women's 200 m, clocking 43.710 to hold off Italy's Olympia Della Giustina (45.439), with Poland's Dorota Borowska third in 45.504. She then teamed with Anastasiia Rybachok for the C2 women's 200 m and won in 43.399, ahead of a Spanish boat (Moreno, 44.579) and the Polish pairing of Borowska and Milena Mackiewicz, who took bronze in 44.914. Over the longer 500 m she was just as commanding: 2:00.822 to win the C1, again with Della Giustina (2:03.347) in second and Hungary's Réka Opavszky third, and 2:00.787 alongside Rybachok in the C2, beating Hungary's Kiss-led boat (2:02.507) and Spain's Moreno crew. Her only blank came in a fifth final — a stat line that reads less like a gap than like proof of how much she takes on.

Context turns that haul from impressive to historic. Luzan, born 27 March 1997 in Ivano-Frankivsk, is a former artistic gymnast who switched codes and built one of the most decorated canoe careers in the sport. She owns three Olympic medals — C1 200 m bronze (47.034) and C2 500 m silver in Tokyo 2020, then C2 500 m silver again in Paris 2024 with Rybachok (1:54.30) — and carried Ukraine's flag at the Paris closing ceremony. At the 2025 World Championships in Milan she won four golds in a single regatta (C1 200, C1 500, C2 200, C2 500), and her European résumé already included C1 500 m and C2 500 m golds in Poznań 2021, C2 500 m in Munich 2022 and C1 500 m in Račice 2025. Montemor's four-gold sweep is the continental mirror of Milan.

She has rarely hidden why the racing matters beyond the result. "It is so difficult for us to train and compete when we know what is happening in our country," she said in 2022, describing a family kept in a safe place while "every day is different and there are always missiles and rockets, so you can never be sure." After Milan she was lighter: "This is magic. It is amazing... now I am going to sleep and celebrate and come back even stronger." In Montemor she came back stronger.

The multi-medalists: Fuksa, Kőhalmi, Jagsch

If Luzan was the headline, three other paddlers wrote the sub-plots, each leaving with two golds. Martin Fuksa completed the men's canoe double that has become his signature, winning the C1 1000 m in 3:41.797 — with Greece's Stefanos Dimopoulos taking bronze behind him — before adding the C1 500 m in 1:45.367. Across two distances and two finals, the Czech was untouched in the boats he chose to contest, a reminder that the men's single canoe over both Olympic and non-Olympic distances still runs through him.

Hungary's Emese Kőhalmi built a different kind of double — a distance double that demanded two very different races. She first won the K1 women's 1000 m in 3:56.731, edging Sweden's Melina Andersson (3:57.681) by barely a second, then returned on the final day for the gruelling K1 women's 5000 m and won that too in 22:50.480, with Andersson again second (22:51.363) less than a second back. Beating the same rival twice across distances that reward such different physiologies — a flat-out 1000 and a 22-minute grind — is the rarer of the week's doubles.

Germany's Pauline Jagsch anchored the third. She took the women's K1 500 m in 1:47.164, holding off Poland's Anna Puławska (1:48.004) and Hungary's Zsóka Csíkós (1:48.024) in a finish separated by hundredths, then powered the women's K2 500 m to gold in 1:45.896 with Paulina Paszek, ahead of the Polish boat of Martyna Klatt and Puławska (1:46.426) and Italy's Zironi-Rossetti crew (1:46.856). Jagsch's double was the spine of a German kayak performance that also delivered the men's K2 500 m, where Jacob Schopf and Max Lemke won in 1:30.921 ahead of Hungary (1:31.806) and Czechia (1:32.016). Three of the cycle's most-watched flat-water kayak finals, three German golds.

The boats told their own dynasty stories too. Spain assembled the regatta's strongest small-boat-to-crew bridge, with Arévalo's K1 200 m (34.103, ahead of Portugal's Messias Baptista and Hungary's Gergely Balogh) feeding into K4 women and C4 Mix golds. Hungary, beyond Kőhalmi and Csorba, opened with the men's K4 500 m title. The continent's medals did not pool in one flag — but they pooled in a recognisable set of programs.

A 20-year-old champion and the marathon finale

The single most dramatic result of the week belonged to a Pole who was, in his own words, a teenager a week earlier. Alex Borucki, 20, won the men's K1 500 m in 1:37.749, ahead of Czechia's Josef Dostál (1:38.029) and Germany's Jacob Schopf (1:38.124). The win did not arrive cleanly: Borucki was initially disqualified for finishing "too close to the lane line," then reinstated on a Polish protest, turning a coronation into a half-hour of limbo before the title was confirmed. His pedigree had been building toward exactly this — junior world titles in the K1 500 m at Auronzo (2023) and a 500/1000 double at Plovdiv (2024), then U23 European golds in the K2 500 m and 1000 m at Pitești (2025) with Valerii Vichev. "A week ago I was a teenager about to turn twenty," he said afterwards. "Today I am a senior European champion."

Poland left Montemor with the regatta's most layered medal story behind the champions. Anna Puławska took two silvers — the K1 women's 500 m at 1:48.004 and the K2 women's 500 m at 1:46.426 with Martyna Klatt — while the women's K4 500 m crew of Sandra Ostrowska, Dominika Putto, Adrianna Kąkol and Katarzyna Kościołek added silver in 1:32.336. Dorota Borowska collected two bronzes in the women's canoe, the individual C1 200 m and the C2 200 m with Milena Mackiewicz. "The emotions are huge," Mackiewicz said. "It still hasn't fully sunk in what happened." Putto framed the crew medal simply: "A medal won in a crew always gives special satisfaction."

The 5000 m marathons closed the championship and rewrote a few hierarchies. On home water, Portugal's Fernando Pimenta won the men's K1 5000 m in 21:09.116, holding off Denmark's Mads Pedersen (21:10.102) and Slovakia's Samuel Baláz (21:12.850) — and Pimenta also reached the podium in the men's K1 1000 m, where he and Hungary's Bálint Kopasz shared the medals. Moldova's Serghei Tarnovschi took the men's C1 5000 m in 23:06.332, with Hungary's Balázs Adolf second and Poland's Wiktor Głazunow third. Kőhalmi's K1 women's 5000 m and Zsófia Csorba's C1 women's 5000 m (27:06.548) completed a distance program that, like the sprints, belonged to the strongest programs and the strongest individuals.

What's Next

The continental season now hands off to the global one, with the ICF World Championships the next true measuring stick for almost everyone who climbed a Montemor podium. The questions the regatta posed are mostly forward-facing: whether Liudmyla Luzan can repeat her Milan-and-Montemor four-gold form on a Worlds stage; whether Germany's flat-water kayak depth in K2 men, K2 women and the women's K1 500 m holds against the rest of the world; whether Alex Borucki, so newly senior, can carry a European title into far deeper fields; and whether Martin Fuksa and Emese Kőhalmi can convert continental doubles into world ones.

For readers who followed the week race by race, our earlier coverage sets the table: the opening day of heats and the day-two semifinals that decided which of these names reached Saturday and Sunday's finals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who won the most medals at the 2026 European Canoe Sprint Championships?

Liudmyla Luzan of Ukraine was the individual standout, winning four golds — the C1 200 m, C2 200 m, C1 500 m and C2 500 m — from five finals.

What was Luzan's winning time in the C1 women's 500 m?

She won in 2:00.822, ahead of Italy's Olympia Della Giustina (2:03.347) and Hungary's Réka Opavszky.

Who won the men's K1 500 m, and why was the result delayed?

Poland's Alex Borucki won in 1:37.749, beating Josef Dostál (1:38.029) and Jacob Schopf (1:38.124). He was first disqualified for finishing "too close to the lane line," then reinstated on a Polish protest.

Which boat classes did Martin Fuksa win?

The Czech Martin Fuksa completed a C1 double, winning the 1000 m in 3:41.797 and the 500 m in 1:45.367.

Is Luzan the most complete canoe paddler in Europe right now?

The case is hard to argue against. Four golds across both individual canoe distances and both crew distances, from five finals, repeats the four-gold sweep she produced at the 2025 Milan World Championships — a span of dominance across 200 m, 500 m, C1 and C2 that no rival on the continent currently matches.

Has Germany become the dominant kayak fleet?

On flat water, the evidence points that way. Germany won the men's K2 500 m (Jacob Schopf / Max Lemke, 1:30.921), the women's K2 500 m (Pauline Jagsch / Paulina Paszek, 1:45.896) and the women's K1 500 m (Jagsch, 1:47.164) — Jagsch's double anchoring a sweep of three marquee kayak finals.

Is Alex Borucki a genuine breakthrough or a one-off?

The trajectory argues for the former. Before his 2026 senior European K1 500 m gold he had won junior world titles (Auronzo 2023; a 500/1000 double at Plovdiv 2024) and U23 European golds in the K2 500 m and 1000 m at Pitești with Valerii Vichev — a junior-to-senior progression that landed exactly on schedule.

Who won the long-distance 5000 m races?

On home water, Fernando Pimenta won the men's K1 5000 m in 21:09.116; Serghei Tarnovschi took the men's C1 5000 m in 23:06.332; and Emese Kőhalmi (22:50.480) and Zsófia Csorba (27:06.548) won the women's K1 and C1 5000 m.

Four golds from five finals is the number Montemor will be remembered by, and it belongs to Liudmyla Luzan. The dynasties around her — Fuksa in the canoe, Kőhalmi over the distances, Jagsch and the German kayak fleet, Borucki's contested coronation — gave the championship its texture. But the Ukrainian gave it its headline, and she will carry it into a World Championships where the same four-gold question waits to be asked again.

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