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Almost five years ago, small fins, pieces of plastic a few centimeters like those that surfboards carry, forced

Maialen Chourraut

, the current Olympic champion in slalom canoeing, to undertake a search that lasted too long and that pushed her to despair. If this Tuesday she is at the Tokyo Games (07.57 hours, semifinals and 09.15 hours, the final) to defend her Olympic gold, it is out of sheer insistence, not wanting a technical detail like that to defeat her. But there were times when he thought the road would end badly.

It all started just after the Rio 2016 Games. The International Canoeing Federation (ICF) greatly limited the size of those fins -an arbitrary decision like so many others-, thus invalidating the kayak that the Spanish had been using all her life and forced her to make a call against your will. It was time to ask a manufacturer to make a new canoe adjusted to the regulations, but when this one arrived ... oh, my friend! "The kayak without the fins skidded a lot from the back, it looked like a shopping cart, and we started looking at models, and models, and more models. I think we tested 25 canoes, it was exasperating. Maialen is tiny, but she moves her ass a lot to put the canoe well in the water and we could not find anything that suited its characteristics. There were some that could get along well, but they were not fast. Others that were fast,but they skated too much. In the 2017 and 2019 World Cups he failed because of that, because the canoe was running out of line, and it was like ... huff! I couldn't take it anymore. And in the end it was good for us that the Games were delayed because we found the good canoe in January 2021, "he says.

Xabi Etxaniz

, coach and husband of Chourraut on that eureka !.

"We saw that a French woman was carrying a smaller version of a kayak that Maialen had already tested in 2018 and that she discarded because it was too big. And we ran to the manufacturer to ask for an equal or even slightly smaller one. They sent us up to four sizes and Finally, at the beginning of this year we found the perfect one. As soon as she saw it, Maialen said: 'This one'. And finding it helped her a lot to get to these Games better, "says the coach on the Kasai channel in Tokyo , right after

Ander Elosegi

finished eighth in his test.

This Monday was the fourth Olympic diploma for the Spanish, who was already fourth in the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2012 London Games.

Known rivals

The heat and humidity turn the place into a Jacuzzi where you cannot be without sweating, but both Etxaniz and Chourraut smile because they have come here to enjoy. In addition to the regulation change with the kayak, the canoeist suffered multiple injuries during the Olympic cycle and now, recovered, she just wants to "flow, have fun." "They have been complicated years. Everything has happened to us, we have moved from La Seu d'Urgell to San Sebastián ... many things. But Maialen arrives very well, very strong," predicts Etxaniz and looking at the rivals you can think in anything.

On the list, for example, New Zealander

Luuka Jones

and Australian

Jessica Fox

, who were already defeated by the Spanish five years ago.

The channel is supposed to be "very difficult", as that of the Rio 2016 Games was, so Chourraut, experienced like no one else, has that favor.

After many changes in her life and, above all, a change of canoe that cost her nerves, she is already prepared for a third Olympic medal, who knows if the second gold.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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