THE CANADIAN PRESS
VICHY, France — Canada’s Adam van Koeverden collected his second medal in as many days, grabbing silver in the men’s kayak singles (K-1) 500 metres at a World Cup competition on Sunday.
The three-time Olympic medallist and Oakville, Ont., native took the silver with a time of one minute 35.840 seconds, just behind Denmark’s Kasper Bleibach who earned gold in 1:35.725. Anders Gufstasson of Sweden took the bronze in 1:36.387.
"It’s not a bad start to the season at all," said van Koeverden. "The 500 went pretty well, but the last 100 metres were very hard. Still, I was only a tenth of a second behind Kasper, a guy I have raced against for many years. My goal here this weekend was to stay relaxed and gather some information for my training over the next few weeks."
Earlier in the K-1 200-metre preliminaries, van Koeverden was seventh in his heat and did not advance. On Saturday, van Koeverden won the bronze in the K-1 1,000. The 28-year-old says busy off-season hasn’t hampered his training.
"I’m thankful for being that busy right now in my life," he said. "I went to the Vancouver Olympics but still got on the water everyday. I’m trying to apply the new technology because there is more available and I want experience with that a little more, but overall not any enormous changes for this year."
Van Koeverden was the sole Canadian at the event. He will head to Sweden for two weeks of training before competing at the second World Cup stop in Szeged, Hungary.