Michal Martikán (; born 18 May 1979) is a Slovak slalom canoeist who has been competing at the international level since 1994. In 1996 he became the first athlete to win an

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

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for

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

since the country gained independence in 1993. In total he won 5 Olympic medals (2 golds, 2 silvers and 1 bronze), which is the most among all slalom paddlers. He has also won the World Championship title in the C1 individual category four times.

Career

At the age of 16, Michal Martikán became the youngest winner of a World Cup slalom canoeing event. Three months later, at age 17, Martikán 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 Lukáš Pollert of the Czech Republic. Martikán was the first Olympic champion to represent independent Slovakia. He entered the

2000 Olympics The 2000 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXVII Olympiad and also known as Sydney 2000 (Dharug: ''Gadigal 2000''), the Millennium Olympic Games or the Games of the New Millennium, was an international multi-sport event held from 1 ...

as the favourite, having consistently finished near the top in every major competition and in each World Cup series. At the Sydney Games, Martikán 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 Tony Estanguet (born 6 May 1978 in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Pau) is a French Canoe slalom, slalom canoeist and a three-time Olympic champion in C1. He competed at the international level from 1994 to 2012. Racing career Estanguet won thre ...

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. Competing in his third Olympics in

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

, Martikán again led the qualifying round. He also earned the highest score in the semi-finals, which also served as the first run of the final. After the second run, it appeared that Martikán 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. Martikán regained the Olympic title at the 2008 games in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

. At the

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Martikán took bronze. Michal Martikán is the only slalom canoeist to win five Olympic medals, one in each of the five games from 1996 through 2012. At the

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

, Martikán had an uninterrupted medal run in the individual C1 event between 1995 and 2010. The

2011 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships The 2011 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships took place from September 7–11, 2011 in Bratislava, Slovakia under the auspices of International Canoe Federation. It was the 34th edition. Bad weather conditions on September 7 and 8 forced the organ ...

saw him finish outside the medals for the first time in an Olympic or World Championship individual race in his career. Ironically, this failure came in front of a home crowd on the Čunovo course near

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...

. However, he managed to win gold in the team event with his Slovak teammates to prolong his medal run. He won another six gold medals in the C1 team event between 2013 and 2019, making it 17 straight World Championships with a medal. He won his first medals in

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when he was just 16. He took a bronze in the C1 event and another bronze in the C1 team event. In

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

he won his first individual world title as well as team gold. He won the individual C1 event on three more occasions (

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

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and

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

). As of 2019 he has a total of 23 World Championship medals (15 golds, 3 silvers and 5 bronzes) which is more than any other slalom paddler in any category. He has also won the overall

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

title five times (

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

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2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

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), which is a record among C1 paddlers. At the

European Championships The European Championships is a multi-sport tournament which brings together the existing European Championships of some of the continent's leading sports every four years. The inaugural edition in 2018 was staged by the host cities of Berlin, ...

he has won four straight individual golds between 2007 and 2010. Slovakia won the C1 team event 11 times with him in the team. He also has 6 silvers (4 individual and 2 in team event) and 2 bronzes (1 individual and 1 in the team event). Martikán is coached by his father Jozef.

World Cup individual podiums

¹ World Championship counting for World Cup points :

² European Championship counting for World Cup points :

³ Oceania Championship counting for World Cup points

Awards

* Slovak Sportsperson of the Year: 1996, 1997, 2007, 2008 *Inducted into the Whitewater Hall of Fame: 2010.

Manslaughter conviction

In November 1997 Martikán was involved in a car accident near the village of Velké Zálužie, Slovakia. The car he was driving hit a pedestrian causing him fatal injuries. The investigation concluded that Martikán was traveling substantially over the 40 km/h speed limit. It was also found that the killed man was highly intoxicated at the time of the accident, in dark outside the inhabited area. With Martikán facing actual incarceration due to the violation of his probation terms (during his Australia's training camp he should process the license returning, a day after returning home while picking up the letter from the post office about driving license returning, the police surprisingly wait for him outside the building and he got in troubles...), then-president Rudolf Schuster, amid grave criticism, granted Martikán a presidential pardon, which besides sparing him from jail time effectively meant removal of the conviction from his criminal record. Schuster argued that Martikán's positive athletic representation of the country abroad warranted the pardon, while critics pointed to the double standard and the preferential treatment Martikán was receiving as a sport celebrity.

References

External links