OLYMPIC HISTORY

Though staged as a demonstration sport in 1924, canoeing only became an official medal sport - for men only - in front of Adolf Hitler in 1936, whose loyalties may well have been torn as Austria won three titles to Germany's two. Canoes, kayaks and folding canoes were all in evidence, but the Olympic life of the folding canoe was a brief one - it would never be seen again. Europeans remain the dominant nation in the sport, with Canadians causing the occasional upset.

Women had to wait until after the Second World War, at the London Games of 1948 to take part in canoeing, and then only in one race, the 500 metres Kayak singles. A pairs race was added in Rome, in 1960, but the fours only came in in 1984. From the early 1970s until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German Democratic Republic dominated the sport, their achievements long tainted, however, by evidence of a state-run doping programme.

The star of the 1984 Games was Ian Ferguson, of New Zealand, who won three titles. Ferguson had retired after finishing seventh in the Kayak singles 500 metres race in Moscow, in 1980. However, the New Zealand Sports Federation started to fund the sport a year later and Ferguson returned to win a silver medal at the world championships.

A year later, only one of the four Olympic kayak titles would not have his name against it, that being the pairs 1,000 metres race that went to Alwyn Morris and Hugh Fisher. Morris, a Mohawk Indian from the Caughawaga reserve in Quebec, wore an eagle's feather on the medal rostrum when receiving his gold medal to symbolise the sharing of his victory with all native Americans.

Ferguson had three feathers in his cap; the singles 500 metres, the pairs 500 metres and the fours 1,000 metres titles.

In Seoul, 1988, Greg Barton, who was born with two club feet, overcame that adversity to become the first from the United States to win a kayak title, in the singles 1,000 metres. With Norman Bellingham, Barton later added the pairs 1,000 metres title to his tally. History was also made in the Canadian pairs 500 metres when Philippe Renaud, of France, finished third with Joel Bettin to make medal winning in Olympic canoeing events something of a family affair; his father, Marcel, was second in the 10,000 metres Canadian pairs in 1956 and Philippe's brother, Eric, won the bronze medal in the Canadian pairs 1,000 metres in 1984. Pity the outsider; Philippe's great uncle, also named Marcel, was fourth in the 1924 team pursuit cycle race.

Having hosted the first Olympic canoeing events in shadowy circumstances and dominated the women's sport in shameful circumstances, Germany was also then responsible for introducing a dramatic change in the sport that was as spectacular as it was expensive: whitewater canoeing, or slalom.

The West German hosts spent some £6 million creating artificial rapids and a fast-flowing river. There had been spies in the camp from East Berlin, however, and the neighbouring Germans, those of "democratic" persuasion had built a replica course, had its athletes practising endlessly on it, and travelled west to win both the men's and women's titles.

The prohibitive costs of building slalom courses meant that the event was dropped until the 1992 Games in Barcelona, where the competition was dramatic. Jon Lugbill, of the US, had raced in his first world championship at 15 and won the Canadian slalom singles world title in 1979, 1981, 1983, 1987 and 1989. Such success rendered him clear favourite for the crown in Barcelona. He did in fact finish 0.07sec ahead of Lukas Pollert, of the Czech Republic. However, in one of the quirks of the sport, it was revealed that Lugbill's lifejacket had brushed gate 23 as he sped through the rapids. The five second penalty caused him to drop off the medal rostrum altogether.

If Lugbill's case is spoken of in terms of grand sympathy, the greater sigh goes out to Gareth Marriot, a 22-year-old from Mansfield, who had won the world junior title in 1988 and the overall World Cup title in 1991. In Barcelona, he finished by far the fastest on the course, in 1min 51.48sec, more than 2sec ahead of Pollert. A five second penalty for grazing a gate cost him the gold medal but such was his advantage on the rest of the field that he still hung on to the silver medal. Rule changes for Sydney have reduced the touch penalty to two seconds, which would have left Marriot in the gold medal position in Barcelona. He remains the only Briton ever to win an Olympic canoeing medal.

Pollert was defeated by 17-year-old Michal Martikan, of Slovakia, four years later, when conditions were somewhat more spectacular. Atlanta, instead of spending millions trying to replicate nature, struck a deal with nature instead; the slalom course was run along the Ocoee River in Tennessee, in an Appalachian Mountain gorge some 150 miles from the Olympic stadium. That natural element attracted huge crowds and helped to popularise slalom.

However, the conditions were so naturally fierce that all three medal winners from the women's race in 1992, alongside many others, capsised. That was one of the reasons slalom was dropped from the Games after Atlanta. However, talks between Australia authorities and the International Canoe Federation convinced the IOC that the event was worth reinstating. The course in Sydney is man-made.

Martikan is back in Sydney for the slalom, while the favourites in canoe/kayak flatwater sprint are Birgit Fischer, of Gemany - who by winning in Atlanta became the first woman in Olympic history to win gold medals 16 years apart - and Knut Holmann, of Norway, the reigning 1,000 metre champion.