By Toshiki Hashimoto
(Reuters) – Brazil’s Isaquias Queiroz dos Santos dominated the Olympic men’s canoe single 1,000 metres event to win the gold medal at the Sea Forest Waterway on Saturday after defending champion Sebastian Brendel failed to reach the final.
The 27-year-old Queiroz dos Santos, the silver medallist in Rio, finished with a time of four minutes, 04.408 seconds, ahead of China’s Liu Hao and Moldova’s Serghei Tarnovschi.
Brendel’s bid to become the first man to win a record three Games golds in the event ended in disappointment as the London 2012 and Rio 2016 winner was seventh in the second semi-final with a time of 4:11.413, more than five seconds off the pace.
Lisa Carrington was unsuccessful in her quest to become the first athlete to win four canoe sprint medals at a single Games as New Zealand finished fourth in the women’s kayak four 500m event in which Hungary retained their title.
Belarus took the silver medal in the race, while Poland claimed the bronze.
The German quartet of Max Rendschmidt, Ronald Rauhe, Tom Liebscher and Max Lemke then won gold in the men’s kayak four 500m, finishing in front of Spain and Slovakia.
(Reporting by Toshiki Hashimoto in Tokyo, writing by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford and Michael Perry)
