Georgia Takes First-Ever Gold at European Canoe Championships

This Sunday, the Canoe Sprint European Championships were held in Belgrade, Serbia. Zaza Nadiradze took the gold in the 200-meter sprint, making history as the first Georgian to ever claim the top spot in a European Canoe Association championship race.

Nadiradze finished the 200-meter sprint with a time of 39.2 seconds, squeezing past Russian Ivan Shtyl with a margin of just 0.024 seconds. Third place went to Artsem Kozyr of Belarus who finished in 39.468 seconds.

Nadiradze’s sprint was one of nearly 20 canoe and kayak competitions at the all-Europe tournament where athletes from 40 countries competed.

A team of six men and one woman represented Georgia at the competition this weekend, including two male paracanoe athletes. The athletes were Zaza Nadiradze, Tengiz Diasamidze, Yury Berasnevich, Murman Malania, Joni Tophuria, Badri Kavelashvili, and Mariam Kerdikashvili.

Nadiradze is Georgia’s winningest canoe athlete, and represented the country at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, marking the first time Georgia has sent a canoer to the Olympic games. He took home the silver medal at the Canoe Sprint World Cup in Szeged, Hungary last month.

By Samantha Guthrie

Photo: Canoe Europe