Hangzhou Super Cup 2026 explained: invitation-only racing, prize money and who is missing
- Published
- 2026-09-29T18:37:43+00:00
- Author
- PaddleStats
Full competition results: ICF Hangzhou Super Cup
The Hangzhou Super Cup 2026 is an invitation-only paddling event, and its canoe sprint programme brings 64 athletes to the Fuyang course from 1 to 3 October to race for prize money paid down to eighth place. The start lists include seven of this year's world champions in single boats, two Chinese Olympic champions and a single Polish paddler, Wiktor Głazunow.
European fans may be surprised by the timing. The season effectively ended in late August with the World Championships in Poznań. The Super Cup is neither a World Cup nor a championship. It is a showcase event run by the world federation, known since July as Paddle Worldwide (formerly the ICF), and the host city covers the athletes' stay. Paddlers travel on their own, without coaches. Here is how it works, who is racing and who stayed at home.
Overview: 64 paddlers from 20 teams, 28 of them from China
The sprint programme has just four Olympic events, all over 500 m: women's and men's single canoe (C1) and single kayak (K1). Two mixed 5000 m relays follow on Friday. Each individual event has 16 starters. The hosts fill 28 of the 64 places. The other 36 are invited guests: 32 athletes from 18 countries and four Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN), who race without national colours.
| Team | Athletes | One to watch |
|---|---|---|
| China | 28 | Sun Mengya, two-time Olympic champion in C2 500 m |
| Hungary | 6 | Zsóka Csikós, 2026 world champion in K1 1000 m |
| Spain | 4 | Jaime Duro, 2026 world silver medallist in C1 5000 m |
| AIN | 4 | Zakhar Petrov, 2026 world champion in C2 500 m |
| Italy | 3 | Andrea Di Liberto, 2026 world champion in K1 200 m |
The sprint runs over three days. Thursday 1 October brings the heats from 08:40 local time (02:40 CEST) and the semi-finals from 13:02 (07:02 CEST). The relays are on Friday, and the four finals start at 15:30 local time on Saturday 3 October (09:30 CEST). Hangzhou is six hours ahead of Central Europe. Results of the 500 m races will appear live on the Hangzhou Super Cup event page.
Progression is simple and unforgiving. Each event has two heats of eight. The top two in each heat go straight to the final, and everyone else goes to the semi-finals. From each of the two semi-finals, again only the top two advance. Half of every field, eight of the 16 boats, is therefore out on Thursday with no prize money.
What the Super Cup is and why it is held in Hangzhou
The Super Cup itself is not new: sprinters raced for it in Barnaul (2018), Linyi (2019) and Oklahoma City (2022). The first Hangzhou edition was held in October 2024 on the same Fuyang course that hosted canoeing at the Asian Games a year earlier. It was bigger than this year's event and, according to the federation, the first to bring together four disciplines – sprint, slalom, marathon and canoe polo. Chinese media reported 529 athletes from 36 countries, and the prize pool was $350,000. Moldova's Serghei Tarnovschi earned the most ($5,900). Argentina's Agustín Vernice was third on the list with $4,100, and Sweden's Melina Andersson took home $4,000. Both are racing again this year.
The second Hangzhou edition follows an agreement signed in April by federation president Thomas Konietzko and Yang Yingying, director of the Hangzhou Sports Bureau. The city is staging a second event at the same venue on the same dates: the Dragon Boat World Championships. With SUP included, that makes 65 medal events in four disciplines and about 1,000 athletes from more than 40 countries. The title sponsor is Hangzhou Cable.
What sets the Super Cup apart from a World Cup is the invitation. There are no qualification standards or national quotas; the organiser picks the field, and the world ranking is used only to seed the heats. The athlete guide is blunt about the conditions: "There are no team leaders or coaches accompanying and assisting you." Every athlete has to wake up on time, catch the shuttle, rig the boat and get to the start alone.
The organiser has also added events outside the Olympic programme. "Virtual Paddle" is an ergometer race rendered as a video game on a big screen, and Saturday brings a 4 km mass-start SUP race that is also open to amateurs. On Friday the sprinters can try slalom boats and the slalom paddlers can try sprint boats. The guide expects every athlete to race on the ergometers, and anyone who misses the ergometer final must start in the SUP race.
Who pays, and how much can be won
The organiser covers the hotel (twin rooms), meals and airport transfers. Boats and seats are supplied free of charge by the federation's partner Peisheng, a Chinese boat builder. Athletes bring only their own paddles and spraydecks, so national federations do not have to ship a team or equipment halfway round the world.
Sprint prize money is paid down to eighth place in every event (amounts in US dollars):
| Place | K1 / C1 500 m | Mixed 5000 m relay (per pair) |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2,200 | 3,200 |
| 2nd | 1,700 | 2,600 |
| 3rd | 1,200 | 2,000 |
| 4th | 1,000 | 1,800 |
| 5th | 900 | 1,600 |
| 6th | 800 | 1,400 |
| 7th | 700 | 1,200 |
| 8th | 600 | 1,000 |
The four 500 m races carry $36,400 and the two relays $29,600, for a sprint total of $66,000. The prize table in the athlete guide does not state a currency; only the SUP race is marked, in yuan. The federation's own preview, however, puts the Super Cup prize money at USD 130,000, which matches the sprint and slalom pools combined ($66,000 and $65,000). The organiser notes that the amounts differ slightly from those first advertised, because the money was spread evenly across disciplines. The figures are hard to compare with the $350,000 of two years ago, which covered four disciplines.
Two rules will shape the racing. First, a DNS without a valid medical reason forfeits prize money in every event, so nobody is likely to skip the relay to save energy for Saturday's final. Second, the relay pairs are drawn at the athletes' meeting. Each pair is one woman and one man, who alternate over four laps of 1,250 m and split the prize money equally.
Who is racing: world champions from Poznań and Asian Games gold medallists
China's team flies in straight from the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, where the sprint regatta ended on 26 September. Six Asian Games gold medallists will race in Hangzhou.
Women's C1 500 m. The race of the weekend. Canada's Sophia Jensen won the world title in Poznań in 2:00.78, ahead of Hungary's Ágnes Kiss and AIN's Alena Nazdrova, and both medallists are in Hangzhou too. Jensen's main rival, though, should be Sun Mengya. The Chinese paddler won C1 500 m at the World Cups in Szeged (1:59.00) and Montreal this season, and took C2 500 m gold at the Asian Games. In the Szeged final Jensen finished second, 0.75 s behind her. Italy's Olympia Della Giustina, the 2026 European silver medallist over the distance, completes the list of contenders.
Men's C1 500 m. Ji Bowen, Olympic C2 500 m champion in Paris, won C1 500 m bronze in Poznań (1:47.10). At the Asian Games he won both C1 500 m and C2 500 m, the latter with Wu Shengyue. His biggest threat may be Zakhar Petrov, the 2025 world champion in C1 500 m (1:46.27). In Poznań, Petrov won C2 500 m gold with Ivan Shtyl, who is also racing here. Greece's Stefanos Dimopoulos was fourth in the Poznań C1 500 m final. The field also includes Olympic C2 500 m silver medallist Carlo Tacchini and two world champions over longer distances: Dániel Fejes (C1 1000 m, a dead heat for gold with Martin Fuksa) and Balázs Adolf (C1 5000 m).
Women's K1 500 m. New Zealand's Aimee Fisher took silver in Poznań in 1:48.02, 0.47 s behind Pauline Jagsch. At the Paris Olympics she was fourth in K1 500 m. She faces three 2026 world champions from other distances: Zsóka Csikós (K1 1000 m), Melina Andersson (K1 5000 m) and Denmark's Frederikke Mørcke (K1 200 m). China's entries include Wang Nan, Asian Games K1 500 m champion and 2026 world champion in K4 500 m, and Yin Mengdie, 2026 world silver medallist in K2 500 m.
Men's K1 500 m. None of the three Poznań medallists is racing. The fastest season's best in the field belongs to Vernice, who was fifth in the Szeged World Cup final in 1:37.59. In Paris the Argentine was fourth in K1 1000 m. Andrea Di Liberto won the K1 200 m world title in Poznań, while Sweden's Martin Nathell and Germany's Jakob Thordsen are 1000 m specialists. The hosts enter eight paddlers, including Li Chenhao, the 2026 Asian champion in K1 500 m.
Who is missing from Hangzhou, and why
Of the four single-boat 500 m world champions from Poznań, only Jensen made the trip to China. Brazil's Isaquias Queiroz (C1), Germany's Pauline Jagsch (K1) and Australia's Thomas Green (K1) are absent. So are Martin Fuksa, world silver medallist in C1 500 m, and Portugal's Fernando Pimenta, a double world champion in Poznań.
The organiser has not published its invitation criteria, so the reasons can only be inferred. The event comes a month after the World Championships, when most European teams have finished their season. The trip is long, and athletes travel without a coach. A win is worth $2,200, while missing the final earns nothing. And there are no crew boats, in which many of the world's best paddlers race, Poles among them. The result is a field with a few stars, plenty of specialists from other distances and a large home team.
None of Poland's medallists from Poznań made the trip either: Anna Puławska (K1 500 m bronze, shared with Natalia Drobot), Alex Borucki (K1 500 m bronze) and Oleksii Koliadych (C1 200 m gold).
Wiktor Głazunow is Poland's only sprinter
Wiktor Głazunow of AZS AWF Gorzów became world champion in C1 5000 m in 2024 (25:33.56). A year later he won world bronze over the same distance, and in June 2026 he took European bronze in Montemor-o-Velho. In Paris he was sixth in C1 1000 m. In Poznań he finished fifth in C1 5000 m and eighth in the C2 500 m final.
In Hangzhou he is drawn in lane 6 of the second C1 500 m heat, at 08:55 local time on Thursday (02:55 CEST). The heat includes two men who have gone under 1:46 this season, Ji Bowen (1:44.43) and Wu Shengyue (1:45.25), as well as Fejes, Shtyl and Duro. Głazunow's best C1 500 m time this year is 1:49.82, set at the Polish Championships. A top-two finish and a direct place in the final would be a big surprise, so the realistic target is to get through the semi-finals. The men's C1 semis are scheduled for 13:12 and 13:17 local time (07:12 and 07:17 CEST).
His better chance of prize money may come on Friday. The C1 relay covers 5000 m in total, the distance of his world medals. His partner will be drawn at the athletes' meeting, and the race starts at 15:04 local time (09:04 CEST).
Poland has three athletes in the slalom, which runs on the neighbouring course over the same days: Klaudia Zwolińska (C1, K1 and kayak cross), Kacper Sztuba (C1) and Mateusz Polaczyk (K1 and kayak cross). Meanwhile, the Asian Games slalom is under way in Japan.
What's Next: the sprint schedule hour by hour (CEST)
- Thursday 1 Oct, 02:40–03:15 – eight heats, two each in women's C1, men's C1, women's K1 and men's K1.
- Thursday 1 Oct, 07:02–07:37 – eight semi-finals in the same order.
- Friday 2 Oct, 09:04 – mixed C1 5000 m relay; 09:34 – mixed K1 5000 m relay.
- Saturday 3 Oct, 09:30 – women's C1 final, 09:36 – men's C1, 09:42 – women's K1, 09:48 – men's K1.
The Super Cup closes the sprint season. One of the last events on the federation calendar is the SUP Cup in Kemer (28–31 October). For Ji Bowen, Sun Mengya and Wang Nan, Hangzhou is their third major regatta since late August, after Poznań and Aichi-Nagoya. For the Europeans, it is one last payday of the season.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Hangzhou Super Cup 2026?
It is an invitation-only event run by Paddle Worldwide (formerly the ICF) from 30 September to 3 October 2026 on the Fuyang course in Hangzhou (sprint: 1–3 October). The sprint programme has only four 500 m events (men's and women's K1 and C1) and two mixed 5000 m relays. The top eight in each event receive prize money.
Is the Super Cup a World Cup?
No. There are no qualification standards or national quotas, the organiser picks the field, and athletes travel without coaches. The world ranking is used only to seed the heats.
How much does the winner of the Hangzhou Super Cup 2026 earn?
A 500 m win pays $2,200 and eighth place pays $600. The winning relay pair splits $3,200 equally. In total, $66,000 is on offer in the sprint, and according to the federation, $130,000 across the whole Super Cup including slalom.
Who covers the athletes' costs in Hangzhou?
The Hangzhou organisers and the federation provide the hotel, meals, transfers and Peisheng boats. Athletes bring their own paddles and pay tax on their prize money in their home country.
What time does Wiktor Głazunow race in Central European time?
His C1 500 m heat starts on Thursday 1 October at 02:55 CEST. If he does not qualify directly for the final, he races a semi-final at 07:12 or 07:17. The men's C1 final is on Saturday at 09:36, and the C1 5000 m relay starts on Friday at 09:04.
Are any 500 m medallists from the Poznań World Championships racing in Hangzhou?
Yes. Of the four single-boat 500 m world champions, only Sophia Jensen (women's C1) is racing. Aimee Fisher, Ji Bowen, Ágnes Kiss and Alena Nazdrova, who also won single-boat 500 m medals in Poznań, are in the field too, as are C2 500 m world champions Zakhar Petrov and Ivan Shtyl.
Which race looks the most open?
Women's C1 500 m. World champion Sophia Jensen meets Sun Mengya, who beat her by 0.75 s in Szeged in May, as well as Ágnes Kiss and Alena Nazdrova, the silver and bronze medallists from Poznań.
The first real test comes early on Thursday morning, when Wiktor Głazunow lines up against Ji Bowen, Wu Shengyue and Fejes in the second C1 500 m heat. Live results, race by race, will be on the Hangzhou Super Cup page. After the sprint season, the federation calendar moves on to the SUP Cup in Kemer.