Kayak Singles, 500 metres, Men

The field for the men’s K-1 500 at the 1996 Summer Olympics was fairly open, as results in the event at the World Championships had been fairly inconsistent. The last three World Champions had been Mikko Kolehmainen of Finland, who was also the defending Olympic champion, Sergey Kalesnik of Belarus, who was also the 1995 runner-up, and Poland’s Piotr Markiewicz. Norway’s Knut Holmann, meanwhile, was the most recent Olympic bronze medalist. It was Italy’s Antonio Rossi, however, who posted the fastest time in the opening round, leaving Kolehmainen in third behind German Lutz Liwowski. Markiewicz and Kalesnik, meanwhile, were third behind Geza Magyar of Romania, while Holmann took the third heat. In the first semi-final heat, Rossi not only defeated Holmann, Kolehmainen, Markiewicz, but helped eliminate Kalesnik and did so in Olympic record time. Liwowski and Magyar, meanwhile, were the first two finishers in the other heat. Rossi then took charge of the final, winning in Olympic record time and almost a second ahead of everyone else, while the race for the final podium spots came down to a battle between Holmann, Markiewicz, Magyar, and Liwowski, who finished in that order within 0.97 seconds of each other. Rossi thus became a double Olympic champion, having won the K-2 1000 the previous day, while Holmann added silver to the gold medal he had won in the K-1 1000.