Lyudmyla Luzan, leader of the Ukrainian national kayaking and canoeing team, ended the 2025 World Championships with a victory in the 200-metre singles event. This was her fourth gold medal at the tournament, according to Suspilne. Sport.
The 200-metre single canoe final was Luzan’s last race at the 2025 World Championships. Prior to that, the Ukrainian had won three previous finals: the double in the Olympic 500-metre distance, the single in the 500 metres and the double with Iryna Fedoriv in the 200 metres.
In the 200 m final, Luzan led the race from the start and finished first with a time of 46.09 seconds. She beat her closest rival, Cuban Yarislaydis Cirilom, who was a medalist at the 2024 Olympics, by 0.18 seconds. Third place went to Yekaterina Shlyapnikova (46.59).
2025 World Championships. Women. Canoe single 200 m
- Lyudmila Luzan (Ukraine) — 46.09
- Yarisleydi Cirilom (Cuba) — 46.27
- Yekaterina Shlyapnikova — 46.59
To sum up, four gold medals at one world championship is a record for Luzan in terms of both the number of victories and the total number of awards at one tournament. She did not lose a single race.
This is Luzan’s ninth gold medal at world championships. She won her first in 2021 in the 500 m canoe double.
Luzan won her first world medal in the 200 m canoe single. Previously, she had only won medals in this discipline at the 2020 Olympic Games (bronze) and at the 2021 and 2022 European Championships and the 2023 European Games (three silvers).
Thanks to Luzan’s fourth gold medal, Ukraine moved up to second place in the medal standings (four gold medals and two silver medals), ahead of the ‘neutral’ athletes. Hungary is in the lead with five gold, two silver and two bronze medals.