Canoe Doubles (C2), Slalom, Men

Both the 1992 Olympic runners-up, Miroslav Šimek and Jiří Rohan of the Czech Republic, and bronze medalists, Franck Adisson and Wilfrid Forgues, returned to the Olympics in 1996 in the hopes of improving upon their previous performance. Šimek and Rohan were also the 1993 World Champions, while Adisson and Forgues had been third in 1993 and runners-up in 1995. Swiss brothers Peter and Ueli Matti were the reigning European champions, while Poland’s Krzysztof Kołomański and Michał Staniszewski were the most recent World Champions.

Kołomański and Staniszewski performed the best of these pairs in the first run, finishing in fourth place, while the Matti brothers were eighth, Adisson and Forgues were tenth, and Šimek and Rohan were 14th. The top three spots went to André Ehrenberg and Michael Senft of Germany, twin brothers Petr and Pavel Štercl of the Czech Republic, and Emmanuel Del Rey and Thierry Saïdi of France. Of all of these teams, only the Štercl brothers failed to post a better mark in the second round, with the most dramatic increase being that of Šimek and Rohan, who went from 14th to a silver medal; only Adisson and Forgues bettered their score. Ehrenberg and Senft, meanwhile, improved enough to stave off Del Rey and Saïdi’s challenge and remain on the podium with bronze.