Canoeist David Cal is no longer the only athlete of the Spanish Olympics with five Olympic medals. From now on he is accompanied by Saúl Craviotto, who has won the silver medal in Tokyo 2020 to complete an amazing run; gold in Beijing 2008, silver in London 2012 and gold and bronze in Rio 2016. The Spanish K4, led by Saúl himself, arrived in Japan with the firm objective of fighting for the gold against Germany. And they did. However, in the final inches they lacked one last change of pace to complete the feat and place themselves on the top of the podium.

The four paddlers of the Catholic University of Murcia, Saúl Craviotto, Marcus Cooper Walz, Rodrigo Germade and Carlos Arévalo, have had a fantastic competition, even beating the Olympic record in the heats. In the final, the fight for the gold was, as expected, a duel between Spain and Germany. As the experts predicted, the Spanish team took the lead at the beginning. The strategy was to achieve enough distance to withstand the fearsome German change of pace in the last 200 metres. For a moment it seemed that Spain was going to hold on to its lead, but in the end the Germans proved to have calculated the distance and their strength perfectly. Germany clocked in at 1:22:219. Just 226 thousandths of a second behind, the Spanish team reached the finish-line to take the silver. The bronze went to Slovakia.