If you live anywhere near a navigable — even barely navigable — body of water, today would be a good day to get your canoe out of the shed and try to see just how fast you can paddle it. Why do that today? Because by coincidence, two Olympic champion canoe sprinters were born on November 20, about 10 years and many miles apart.
Rupert Weinstabl was born in 1911 in Austria, and competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. By the time he competed, Germany had taken over Austria, so Weinstabl was a member of the German team. He won a silver medal in the 1,000 meter race, and a bronze in the 10,000 meter. He also medaled in the 1938 World Championships (that would be the Canoe Sprint World Championships), again for the German team. He medaled in the same two distances, but this time took gold and silver.
Gunnar Åkerlund was born in 1923 in Sweden, and in the 1948 Olympics in London he won the gold medal in the 10,000 meter canoe sprint. He stuck around in the sport and won a silver medal in the same event in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. Like Weinstabl, Åkerlund was both an Olympic champion and a World Champion; he won two golds at the 1948 contest and a silver in 1950.
Canoe sprinting is organized by the International Canoe Federation, which also presides over the Canoe Slalom World Championships. And to be clear, Weinstabl and Åkerlund didn’t compete in the exact same events — there are two variations. You can compete in either an open canoe with a single-blade paddle (as Åkerlund did) or in a closed kayak with a double-bladed paddle, which is where Weinstabl raced. There are also 1-, 2-, and 4-person versions of all the boats. Both Weinstabl and Åkerlund were in 2-person craft.
As far as I know there aren’t any canoes named after either Weinstabl or Åkerlund, but the names of canoes aren’t always made public, so who knows. If you’d like to attend the 2025 Canoe Sprint World Championships, be in Szeged, Hungary May 16-18. That’s only one of what turns out to be a lot of different canoe racing events organized by the ICF. So start paddling! And don’t burn out too early; remember that in canoe racing, they have a race 10,000 meters long that’s still called a sprint.
