Pablo Graña added a silver medal to the Spanish delegation participating in the European Championships in Munich after finishing second in the C1 200 in a heart-stopping final won by Lithuanian Henrikas Zustautas.
Graña was 62 thousandths away from victory. Zustautas, in a final stroke, came back at the last moment from a race that seemed like the Spanish paddler was going to win. Even so, silver, a great result, served Spain to add its fourth medal after those won this Friday by María Corbera (gold in C1 500), Francisco Cubelos, Roi Rodríguez, Pedro Vázquez and Íñigo Peña (silver in K4 1000) and Begoña Lazkano and Laia Pèlachs (bronze in the K2 1000).
In the rest of the finals, the Spanish participants did not get any more medals. In the C2 500 final, the couple formed by Cristina Soutelo and Antia Romero, in their first major competition, finished the race in eighth position. Ukraine, with Liudmyla Luzan and Anastasiia Chetverikova, won the gold medal after dominating the 500 meters with only opposition from Hungary's Giada Bragato and Bianka Nagy, second at 1.252 with a total time of 1:58.924.
The K4 500 boat was also unable to fight for the medals. Carlos Garrote, Cristian Toro, Lázaro López and Iñigo Peña finished in seventh place. Boat B from Spain (Saúl Craviotto, Marcus Cooper, Carlos Arévalo and Rodrigo Germade won gold at the Halifax World Cup two weeks ago), with most of its paddlers having several tests on them, lost steam in the middle of a race that they won with authority the Germans Max Rendschmidt, Tom Liebscher, Jacob Schopf and Max Lemke.
In the same position, seventh, Lara Feijoo closed her participation in the final of the K1 200. The paddler from Tudense was close to fifth place, but in the final stretch she fell apart and was surpassed by the Swedish Melina Andersson and by the Portuguese Teresa Portela. The gold went to the Danish Emma Jorgensen, current Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020. And in the K2 200 final, Carlos Garrote and Cristian Toro finished in fifth position. With a time of 32.197, they finished more than a second behind the winning boat, Italy, which posted a time of 31.662.
In addition, the women's K4 500 (Bárbara Pardo, Elisa Zapata, Miriam Vega and Carla Corral) and men's K1 200 (Iván Fernández) boats qualified for their respective finals.
