Olympics canoeing: Germany take C2 1,000m gold

Germany's Peter Kretschmer and Kurt Kuschela justified their Olympic selection with a strong finish to win gold in the men's C2 1,000m.

The duo, picked ahead of world champions Stefan Holtz and Tomasz Wylenzek, surged through in the last 250m to win in 3:33.304.

Belarus brothers and Olympic champions Andrei and Aliaksandr Bahdanovich finished second.

Russian pair Alexey Korovashkov and Ilya Pervukhin took bronze.

It was world silver medallists Azerbaijan duo Sergiy Bezugliy and Maksim Prokopenko who led for most of the race but they faded to finish fourth as the main contenders came through.

The highly fancied pair from Romania, Liviu Dumitrescu-Lazar and Victor Mihalachi, were off the pace in seventh.