The International Canoe Federation is one step closer to adding extreme canoe slalom to the Olympic program after a virtual board meeting on Tuesday. The ICF Board voted to include men’s and women’s extreme slalom on its proposal for the Paris 2024 canoe program as it strives to continue to innovate and to deal with a reduction of Olympic quota places. Extreme slalom is a relatively new discipline to canoe, but it’s thrilling head-to-head format has attracted new fans and strong television ratings since its introduction to the ICF world cups and world championship programmes. The addition of the new discipline on the Olympic schedule would not require any extra athlete quotas, with many of the canoe slalom competitors likely to also contest the extreme competition.
International Canoe Federation
I’ve seen a lot of debate on this over the past few days and it’s an interesting conundrum, (Of which I’m on neither side).
Having worked within a Sprint set up I have upmost respect for the level of training and commitment they put in. The same also goes to slalom athletes. As Olympic disciplines it’s no secret this is where the money is focused but it’s also remembered that if you aren’t at medal contention level then you aren’t getting paid you are still training day in day out and working a full time job.
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