Poznań 2026 World Championships, final day: Pimenta doubles up, Borucki takes bronze

Published

2026-08-31T06:30:09+00:00

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PaddleStats

Full competition results: ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships - Poznan

The 2026 ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships in Poznań closed with fifteen A finals, and the last word belonged to Fernando Pimenta, who won the 5000 m a day after taking the 1000 m title. Poland finished the week with bronze for Alex Borucki in the K1 500 m.

Overview

Sunday on Lake Malta was two different regattas stitched together. Between 10:04 and 11:08 the course handed out eleven sets of medals, one final every six or seven minutes. Then it emptied for three hours and came back as an endurance loop: four 5000 m races, each over half an hour long, the last of them starting at 15:50. Twenty-six races in all, 319 boats, 374 athletes from 66 countries and delegations, 45 medals shared by nineteen teams.

Hungary reached the podium seven times, more than anyone, and stood on top of it once. Five silvers in a single day is the kind of return that reads very differently in the results table than it does in the team tent. Australia did the opposite: three A finals entered, three titles won, nothing else. Great Britain won both paracanoe classes in which it had a boat.

The morning Australia won everything it entered

Thomas Green opened the block. The Australian covered 500 m in 1:37.66 and beat Ádám Varga by four tenths, with Borucki third in 1:38.95 — a first senior world medal for a 2006-born racer, on his home course. Fourth, 1.75 s down, came Josef Dostál, the defending champion at the distance, who arrived in Poznań after an illness.

An hour later Australia had two more titles. Curtis McGrath took KL2 200 m by three hundredths from Fernando Paulo, 42.76 to 42.79. Kailey Harlen and Natalia Drobot settled the K2 500 m inside the first half of the race and won by 1.65 s from China's Shimeng Yu and Mengdie Yin. Behind them it was frantic: Germany's Paulina Paszek and Pauline Jagsch took bronze by one hundredth of a second.

Martyna Klatt and Anna Puławska, world champions in this event a year ago, came home seventh.

Germany won one race that morning, and won it comfortably. Jacob Schopf and Max Lemke posted 1:27.57 in the K2 500 m and left Portugal's João Ribeiro and Messias Baptista 1.72 s behind — an age, over that distance. The same German pair had finished third in Milan a year earlier.

Two title defences went through untroubled. Liudmyla Luzan won the C1 200 m in 44.40, half a second clear of Sophia Jensen and Nevin Harrison. Neutral athletes Zakhar Petrov and Ivan Shtyl retained the C2 500 m; Shtyl, born in 1986, won it alongside a partner sixteen years younger.

The fastest ride of the morning, though, belonged to the women's K1 200 m. Frederikke Mørcke won in 39.71 — the only sub-40 in the final — from Anna Lucz and Sara Ouzande. Defending champion Nan Wang placed fourth, Julia Olszewska sixth.

Poland's Sunday comes down to one sentence and a few footnotes. The sentence is Borucki: a twenty-year-old who beat the defending champion in a senior world final and finished 1.29 s off the win. The footnotes are harder. Olszewska was sixth over 200 m, 1.42 s behind Mørcke, having gone 40.80 in her heat — three tenths quicker than her final. Wiktor Głazunow, a 5000 m bronze medallist in Milan, finished fifth this time. And Klatt and Puławska lost their K2 title by 3.69 s, which over 500 m is not a bad day but a different level.

Two British golds and the oldest champion of the day

Emma Wiggs is 46, a Paralympic champion in VL2 in Tokyo and Paris, and from Sunday a world champion in the class again. She won in 58.76, more than two seconds clear of Brianna Hennessy. A year ago she was not on this podium at all.

Hope Gordon won the VL3 200 m in 55.01, two seconds ahead of Yongyuan Zhong. The day before, she had won KL3 — two classes, two races, two titles, having been only third in KL3 in Milan.

Georgia's Serhii Yemelianov retained the men's KL3 by nine hundredths from Gabriel Porto, and China took the women's C4 500 m: Xina Jiang, Anshuo Teng, Mengya Sun and Yanan Ma in 1:45.68, almost a second ahead of Hungary. Poland's crew — Amelia Marcinkowska, Amelia Sołtyńska, Kaja Lach and Maja Rużanowska — finished fifth.

The 5000 m loop: Pimenta doubles up, the defending champion is disqualified

The afternoon belonged to a distance with its own logic. Pimenta won the men's race in 24:15.72, 1.45 s ahead of South Africa's Hamish Lovemore and 2.45 s ahead of Denmark's Mads Brandt Pedersen, the defending champion. It was the Portuguese racer's second title in two days, after Saturday's 1000 m win by 0.22 s over Bálint Kopasz. Twelve months earlier in Milan he had taken bronze over the kilometre.

Varga, silver medallist that same morning, started the 5000 m and did not finish. He had company: six men failed to complete the race and eight more never left the pontoon.

The men's canoe race went to Balázs Adolf in 27:16.73 — thirty seconds up on Jaime Duro and a full minute clear of bronze medallist Robin Hirsch, born in 2007. Milan champion Serghei Tarnovschi was disqualified. Głazunow finished fifth.

Carlotta Loske won the women's canoe 5000 m in 31:15.19, half a minute ahead of Zsófia Csorba. The German is nineteen and leaves Poznań with two world titles — the other came on Friday in the C2 500 m alongside Maike Jakob.

The last defence of these championships belonged to Melina Andersson. The Swede won the women's K1 5000 m in 27:19.42, more than half a minute ahead of Emese Kőhalmi and Kateřina Milová.

Csorba's second silver of the day, after the C4, made her the only woman with two medals on Sunday. Jagsch left Poznań with three medals across the week — gold over 500 m, bronze in the K4 and bronze in the K2. Nobody else took three home.

Those fifteen A finals were the minority of Sunday's programme. Nine B finals and two C finals ran alongside them: no medals, but placings that count in the Olympic qualification ranking exactly like any other. The day opened at 8:45 and closed at 15:50, and 319 boats passed through it.

The A-final block itself lasted 64 minutes. Two races were settled inside a tenth of a second — men's KL2 (0.03) and men's KL3 (0.09) — and in a third, the women's K2, a hundredth decided bronze. Across the whole championships only three titles were won by less than a tenth; two of them landed in that single Sunday hour.

What's next

The long-distance season is only beginning. The Polish Canoe Marathon Championships start on 1 September, and the Olympic Hopes Regatta follows on 10 September, traditionally the first look at the age groups moving up to senior squads. The international season closes with the ICF Hangzhou Super Cup in early October and the ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships in Gualeguaychú three weeks later.

Poznań, though, was about more than one summer. These results feed the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic qualification ranking, and the balance of power on show in that Sunday morning hour — three Australian golds, a German K2, a Chinese C4 — will frame the entire next cycle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who won on the final day of the 2026 World Championships in Poznań?

Fifteen A finals produced fifteen champions: Thomas Green (K1 500 m), Frederikke Mørcke (K1 200 m), Liudmyla Luzan (C1 200 m), Emma Wiggs (VL2 200 m), Curtis McGrath (KL2 200 m), Hope Gordon (VL3 200 m), Serhii Yemelianov (KL3 200 m), Zakhar Petrov and Ivan Shtyl (C2 500 m), Jacob Schopf and Max Lemke (K2 500 m), Kailey Harlen and Natalia Drobot (K2 500 m), China's C4 500 m crew, Carlotta Loske (C1 5000 m), Balázs Adolf (C1 5000 m), Melina Andersson (K1 5000 m) and Fernando Pimenta (K1 5000 m).

How did Poland do on the last day?

One medal: bronze for Alex Borucki in the K1 500 m in 1:38.95. Beyond that, fifth in the women's C4 500 m, sixth for Julia Olszewska over 200 m, seventh for Martyna Klatt and Anna Puławska in the K2 500 m and fifth for Wiktor Głazunow over 5000 m.

Which country won the most medals on the final day?

Hungary, with seven: Balázs Adolf's gold, five silvers and a bronze in the men's C2. Australia, by contrast, won all three finals it contested.

Did Fernando Pimenta win two golds in Poznań?

Yes. He took the 1000 m on Saturday by 0.22 s from Bálint Kopasz and the 5000 m on Sunday by 1.45 s from Hamish Lovemore. A year earlier in Milan he had finished third over the kilometre.

Did Poland underperform at home?

Three medals is one fewer than a year ago, and two golds fewer. The hardest loss was the women's K2: Klatt and Puławska, world champions in Milan, finished seventh, 3.69 s behind Australia. Against that, Borucki's bronze is a first senior world medal for an athlete born in 2006, and Oleksii Koliadych's Friday gold was won by a tenth of a second. The ledger is mixed rather than bad.

Do Hungary keep losing finals in the closing metres?

Five silvers in one day invites the question. Varga lost the 500 m by 0.41 s, Anna Lucz the 200 m by 0.60 s, the women's C4 by 0.93 s — three silvers inside a second of the winner, with the two 5000 m runners-up half a minute back. Across the week Hungary took eight silvers against five golds; in Milan the ratio ran the other way, seven titles and three second places.

Is the 5000 m still a specialists' event?

Less and less. Pimenta won it a day after the 1000 m, Loske two days after her C2 title, and Csorba paired a C4 silver with second place on the loop. All four races were won by athletes who also raced Olympic-class events in Poznań.

How many countries won medals on the final day?

Nineteen shared the 45 medals. Three of them — Georgia, Sweden and Ukraine — won exactly one medal that day, and each of those was gold.

The closing day gave Poznań what people come to Lake Malta for: an hour of sprinting decided in hundredths, and four long races in which Fernando Pimenta, at 37, showed he still beats everyone. Next on the calendar are the ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships in Gualeguaychú and the ICF Hangzhou Super Cup.

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