Kayak single

Oschmautz in the whitewater slalom kayak final!

Felix Oschmautz

(Bild: GEPA)

Canoeist Felix Oschmautz missed out on Austria's second medal at the Olympic Games in Paris in the white water channel of Vaire-sur-Marne on Thursday. After a flawless run and fourth place in the semi-final, the 25-year-old from Carinthia picked up four penalty seconds in a mixed final of the top twelve and ended up in tenth place like his kayak colleague Corinna Kuhnle. 

The touching of poles happened at gates 5 and 14, whereby neither Oschmautz nor Austria's head coach Helmut Oblinger registered one of the mistakes. However, protests are not possible in the final, and even if they were, Oschmautz would only have made an insignificant difference. He was 5.99 seconds behind the Italian winner Giovanni de Gennaro, and without the penalty seconds he would only have finished sixth. In Tokyo, Oschmautz was 7.16 seconds behind. According to the 25-year-old, it was very close for an Olympic Games with only one participant per nation.

He got everything out of himself and stepped on the gas again after the touches. "I took a bit more of a risk and it worked out. But an Olympic final doesn't allow many mistakes." Like three other athletes, European champion Giovanni De Gennaro remained clear, with the 32-year-old finishing 0.20 seconds ahead of the 19-year-old local hero Titouan Castryck, who also remained clear, and 0.65 seconds ahead of 23-year-old Pau Echaniz. After securing his medal, the Spaniard jumped into the whitewater channel with joy.

"I was able to give my best"

It didn't matter whether he came tenth or fourth, Oschmautz emphasized. "I know what it's like to be fourth. And it's not as if everything that isn't a medal is below Felix Oschmautz's level. Nevertheless, the many training camps in this channel have paid off. "I was able to race an Olympic final in front of a great backdrop, I was able to give my best. That was a tenth place, which was nothing bad either." The two Olympic champions from Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2021, Great Britain's Joseph Clarke and the Czech Jiri Prskavec, finished fifth and eighth respectively.

Oblinger said that the Austrian camp was very disappointed and dejected. "The sting is deep because we had expected much more." Since arriving in Paris, there had been a certain training partnership with De Gennaro, in which Felix had dominated. "But now Giovanni has done what he can do. Felix perhaps wasn't quite so clean on the track when he scored the back goal. Then he tried to make up for it with power. But when the water doesn't run with you, it's difficult. He felt strong, but wasn't able to put it into practice."

One more chance
But there is no time to be sad, because the kayak cross continues on Friday - also for Kuhnle and Viktoria Wolffhardt from Lower Austria. The qualifying heats are scheduled for Friday (from 3.30 pm), the knockout phase begins on Saturday and ends with the medal ceremony on Monday. Oschmautz went straight into the cross boat to paddle out. "So that I can build up a bit of a feeling. Cross, everything or nothing is possible there." At the end of June 2023, he won silver in the kayak cross at the European Games in Krakow.