SENIOR MEN

Heavyweights Germany, Italy and Spain remain undefeated after the first day of senior men’s competition at the ICF Canoe Polo World Championships in St-Omer, France, on Wednesday.

The Netherlands is the only other team to not have been beaten as teams start to jostle for a top-two finish in their group to book them a place in the top 12. Hosts France are among the teams still waiting to book their place after being held to a draw by Poland. The French must at least draw with Belgium on Thursday.

Poland will be hoping for a clear winner in the France-Belgium match so they can progress, after recording draws against both teams on Wednesday.

We were not happy with the draws, but they are better than a loss, but we liked how we played,” captain Jakub Maslak said.

When you feel you are winning the game, and then you end up drawing in the last seconds, it is not such a good feeling. We know how good we can play, it’s been a tough season for us with injuries, but we will try our best.”

Likewise in group B, the second position behind Italy will go to the winner of Thursday’s clash between Switzerland and Sweden. In group A Japan only needs to draw against Portugal to go through, while Chinese Taipei also can progress with a draw against USA.

We weren’t happy with our first game, but Germany are one of the top teams in the world,” captain Takahiko Yanagi said.

I have been with the national team for 10 years, and I feel this is a very good team. We have good communication and same game thoughts.”

For Lithuania to progress to the final 12 at its first ICF World Championships they will need to beat Great Britain on Thursday. Captain Lukas Stachovski said his team believe in themselves.

My team from Lithuania, we are all nearly from the one club, so canoe sport is not a big deal but we are trying to lift it up to the next level,” Stachovski said.

WE would like to be top 12, that would be perfect, so we will see. We have Great Britain tomorrow, we have to win against them and then the dream will come true.”

Group E remains wide open, with Austria, New Zealand and Malaysia all still with a possibility of progressing to the next round behind Netherlands.

Malaysia played a 3-3 draw against Austria on Wednesday to earn a valuable point, and now must beat New Zealand to have a top 12 chance. Caprain Amirul Azfar Azwan said the past two years have made it hard for his team to prepare.

We as Asians are quite small in size, so we are trying our best using our speed and knowledge,” captain Amirul Azfar Azwan said.

Before Covid 19 canoe polo was quite popular in Malaysia, but for two years we didn’t have any games, no junior teams to help develop the game. So it was hard for us to progress canoe polo because of the pandemic.

Two years locked down, no training, had to stay at home. Basically its not enough time to train for a world championships, especially for a country like ours which is still new in canoe polo.”

St-Omer represents a return to the world championships for Austria, who competed at the very first world titles in 1994 but haven’t been since. Austrian captain David Hofmann said posting draws against New Zealand and Malaysia will make it hard to progress.

The first draw was pretty good, but the second game we thought we would score more to achieve a chance to go through to the next level,”

Our goal to qualify ourselves for the next world championships is still on track though, to finish top 16. It’s nice to be back, to get a chance to play at this level again.”

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