Eirik Verås Larsen

Eirik Verås Larsen (born March 26, 1976, Flekkefjord) is a Norwegian kayak paddler in flatwater races. He has won a total of five world championship gold medals.

Larsen won the olympic gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the K1 1000 m event. Less than an hour later he won another medal, a bronze medal in the K2 1000 m event together with Nils Olav Fjeldheim.

Larsen has also won a world championship in the K1 1000 m event in 2002, and three world championships together with Nils Olav Fjeldheim, K2 1000 m in 2001 and the marathon event in 2001 and 2002. They were also European K2 1000m champions three times (2000, 2001 and 2004).

In the individual 1000m, Larsen was European champion in 2004 and 2005. He won his second world K1 1000 m title at the 2005 World Championships in Zagreb, Croatia, ahead of Adam van Koeverden and Nathan Baggaley.

In 2006 Larsen was never on form and lost both his World and European titles. At the European Championships in Račice, Czech Republic, he trailed in last in the K1 1000m final, although he did recover to finish a respectable fifth in the 500m final. The normally super-fit Larsen was clearly exhausted at the finish and it was obvious to observers that there would not be enough time for him to regain his fitness level in time for the world championships, to be held a month later in Szeged, Hungary. There he fought hard to defend his K1 1000m title, placing sixth in the final, but had nothing left for the 500m final the following day, where he finished last, some six seconds behind the winner Marek Twardowski. Larsen plainly felt the humiliation keenly and few would write off his chances of bouncing back in 2007.

Larsen held the individual (K-1) 1000m world record of 3:24.920 (Duisburg 2004) until it was bettered by Ben Fouhy of New Zealand (Poznań 2006) with the time of 3:24.495 (backwind of 2 m/s).

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