There was nothing sly at all about Australian Jessica Fox’s commanding gold medal win in women’s K1 Slalom at the Paris Olympics. She won it blatantly.
After a somewhat lackluster run in the semi’s getting her to the finals, she simply dominated the competition, finishing in a flawless time of 96.08 seconds. The next closest paddler was Poland’s Klaudia Zwolinska, taking the silver in 97.53, followed by Great Britain’s Kimberley Woods winning the bronze with a time of 98.94. Nobody else even broke the 100-second mark.
After winning silver and two bronzes in the event at previous Games, Fox finally emerged victorious with her win at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium. Placed eighth after the semi-final, Fox pulled out all the stops in the final, making no mistakes to put her in pole position. She then watched on nervously as paddlers failed to beat her time before victory was confirmed when defending champion Ricarda Funk of Germany received a 50-second penalty towards the end of her final run.
The USA’s Eve Leibfarth finished 19th in the semi-finals with a time of 109 seconds, not enough to advance to the finals.
It is Fox’s fifth Olympic medal and second gold following her canoe title at Tokyo 2020.
“It means everything to me right now,” said Fox. “It’s been years and years of chasing this dream, of getting really close, persevering and picking myself back up. There has been a lot of teamwork, love and gratitude from everyone to help me to get here. Today, to feel that energy from the crowd, and also from everyone who was staying up late back home, it was just the perfect day for me. It didn’t start well but it finished really well and it was just magical.”
There was plenty of pressure on Fox as the four-time world champion in women’s kayak. Three years ago in Tokyo Fox narrowly missed out on gold in women’s slalom with two gate touches and four seconds worth of time penalties . Her time of 102.73 seconds would have been good enough for gold, but those penalties demoted her to third place.
So this was redemption. Her career that now boasts 10 individual world championship titles, 51 individual World Cup victories.
Full results here: https://www.canoeicf.com/news/fox-ends-wait-olympic-kayak-gold-paris-2024