Canadian Doubles, 500 metres, Men

Hungary was the reigning Olympic champion in the C-2 500 and was represented by László Foltán and István Vaskuti, winners of the event at two of the last three World Championships, at the 1980 Summer Olympics. Romania, meanwhile, was the 1978 World bronze medalist, but was able to send the most recent World Champions, Petre Capusta and Ivan Patzaichin, a multiple Olympic medalist, to the Games. These two nations met in the opening round, with the former edging out the latter by 0.28 seconds. Jerzy Dunajski and Marek Wisła, representing 1979 World Championship bronze medalist Poland, took the other heat. Romania and Hungary led the drive for gold in the final, with the latter coming out on top while the former was challenged by both Poland and the Bulgarian duo of Borislav Ananiev and Nikolai Ilkov. Neither could quite catch up, however, and Romania captured silver, while the Bulgarians claimed bronze only 0.27 seconds ahead of Poland. Patzaichin would go on to add another Olympic medal to his collection, gold, in the C-2 1000 the following day.