Duisburg in Germany and Lee Valley in Great Britain have been announced as the hosts of important canoeing world championships which will also double as Olympic selection events for Paris 2024.
The International Canoe Federation board announced in Beijing on Friday that Duisburg would host the 2023 ICF Canoe Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships, while Lee Valley, the 2012 London Olympic venue, will host the 2015 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships.
For Lee Valley it will be the second time it has hosted an Olympic Games qualifying world championships, after it also hosted the 2015 world championships.
Duisburg will host the Olympic qualifier for a fifth time, having also hosted world championships on the eve of the 1980, 1988, 1996 and 2008 Games.
In other announcements, Auronzo in Italy will host the U23 and junior canoe sprint world championships in 2023, while Miyi County in China will host the U23 slalom and wildwater world championships in the same year.
Vejen Kolding in Denmark will host the 2023 ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships, Hangzhou in China the 2023 dragon boat world championships, and Natahala Gorge in the USA the 2023 ICF Wildwater World Championships.
The ICF board has also voted to return to Barnaul, Russia, in 2012 for a canoe sprint world cup. Barnaul proved an outstanding host when some of the world’s best paddlers went to the Siberian city last year for the inaugural Super Cup.
Szeged, Hungary, scene of this year’s ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships, will host the second world cup in 2021.
The ICF canoe slalom program in 2021 will head into the sport’s heartland, with world cups in Germany, Spain, France and the Czech Republic.
The ICF has also agreed to host a canoe slalom world cup in China, which will join Markkleeberg (Germany), Prague (Czech), La Seu (Spain) and Pau (France) as venues in 2021.
In other decisions, Shaoxing in China will host a 2021 ICF marathon world cup, with the potential for a second world cup to be held in Europe. The 2021 ICF canoe wildwater world cups will be held In Treignac, France, and Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzogovina.
There will be ICF canoe wildwater world cups in La Seu, Spain, and Albright in the USA in 2021, while Nottingham in the UK will host a 2020 ICF canoe freestyle world cup, with a second host city still to be announced.
An ICF dragon boat world cup is planned for Ningbo, China, in November of this year.
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