Michal Martikan was on born May 18, 1979. He is a Slovak slalom canoeist. In 1996 he became the first athlete to win an Olympic Games gold medal for Slovakia since the country gained independence in 1993. In total he won 4 Olympic medals 2 gold medals and 2 silver medals, which is the most among all slalom paddlers. He has also won the World Championship title in the C-1 individual category four times. He is considered by many the greatest C-1 slalom paddler alive.
At the age of 16, Michal Martikan became the youngest winner of a World Cup slalom canoeing event. Three months later, at age 17, Martikan was in sixth place after the first run of the canoe slalom singles event at the 1996 Olympics. With nothing to lose, he went all out on the second run and just bettered the score of defending champion Lukas Pollert of the Czech Republic. Martikan was the first Olympic champion to represent independent Slovakia. He entered the 2000 Olympics as the favorite, having consistently finished near the top in every major competition and in each World Cup series. At the Sydney Games, Martikan registered the best score in the qualifying round, but was only in fifth place after the first run of the final. In the second run, he paddled a perfect course and his time was the fastest of the round.
He was able to move up to the silver medal position behind Tony Estanguet of France. Competing in his third Olympics in 2004, Martikan again led the qualifying round. He also earned the highest score in the semifinals, which also served as the first run of the final. After the second run, it appeared that Martikan had regained the Olympic title, but the referees controversially decided to award him a two second penalty which pushed him to second place, only 12 hundredths of a second behind Estanguet. However, Michal Martikan is the only slalom canoeist to win four Olympic medals, because he also won the gold medal in the Beijing 2008 Olympics in the Men's slalom C-1. He has also won the overall World Cup title four times at1998, 2000, 2001 and 2006 which is a record among C-1 paddlers. At the European Championships he has won four straight individual gold medals between 2007 and 2010. Slovakia won the C-1 team event 7 times with him in the team. He also has 3 silver medals 2 individual and 1 in team event.
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