Olympics 2020: Romania's Chirila progresses straight to men's canoe sprint 1,000 m single semis

Romanian canoeist Catalin Chirila on Friday advanced to the semifinals of the men's canoe sprint 1,000 m single event, after winning heat one at the Sea Forest Waterway at the Tokyo Olympics, agerpres reports.

Ranked fifth, along with Victor Mihalachi, in the men's canoe sprint 1,000 m double final, Chirila also signed up for the single event, where he managed to qualify for the semi-finals after winning the heat clocking in at 4:05.617, being followed in the standings by Cuban Jose Pelier Cordova (+0.726) and Chinese Pengfei Zheng (+4.498), the silver medallist in the canoe sprint 1,000 m double final.

The men's canoe sprint 1,000 m single semis are scheduled for Saturday morning.

In heat four, Victor Mihalachi arrived fifth at 4:39.865, and was to compete again in the quarter-finals scheduled about two hours later.

In the kayak and canoe events, Romania has an 34 Olympic medal tally, of which 10 gold, 10 silver and 14 bronze. The last gold was won at C2-1,000 m by Florin Popescu, the current coach of the Olympic canoe team, and Mitica Pricop, bronze medallist in the 500 m event. The last time Romanian kayakers and canoeists made it to the Olympic medal podium was 21 years ago.