Cuba’s Yarisleidis Cirilo was crowned this Friday world champion in the C1 200m in the canoeing world championship held in Duisburg, Germany, and qualified for the Paris-2024 Olympic Games.
A 21-year-old native of the city of Baracoa (far east of Cuba), Cirilo impressed in the final, dominating with a remarkable time of 44.799 seconds.
Second was Spain’s Antia Jacome (45.418), third was China’s Lin Wenjun (45.623) and fourth was the Olympic champion of Tokyo-2020, American Nevin Harrison (45.925).
In the semifinals, also this Friday, the Cuban had led her semifinal series with the best time of all the qualified athletes, the only one under 45 seconds.
This is the second world title won by the Cuban, who had already won gold in the C2 500 together with Katerine Nuevo in last year’s world championships in Canada.
Cirilo is also qualified for Saturday’s final in the C2 500m, a modality in which she made her debut in this tournament together with the 17-year-old Yinnoli López, with whom she has been paddling for only two months.
In recent years, the canoeist of the island has had a dizzying development, with medals in all the tournaments of the world elite, before duetting with Katerine Nuevo (currently suspended for indiscipline).
Last year at the Dartmouth World Championship (Canada), the Cirilo-Nuevo duo made history by winning the first title for Cuban women’s canoeing at the world championships, in the C2 200m.
A year earlier, they had become the first Cuban boat to reach an Olympic final in Tokyo 2020 and in the Copenhagen World Cup they won the first medal in the history of that sport for women on the island, bronze in the C2 500m.
