Russia and Italy step up and challenge the local favourites

By Sportscene

Fans packed the banks of the course for the second day of the 2012 Youth & Masters World Championships in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. Slalom was today’s event, the third of four disciplines to be raced to determine who the world’s best Youth and Masters champions will be in this discipline.

The course proved challenging, with its technical layout consisting of nine downstream and five upstream gates testing the very best crews, with gates 5 through to 8 producing plenty of thrills and spills with two crews ending upside down through gate six on their first runs.

Youth Women – After eight consecutive gold medals to the Czech teams on day one, the Russia Youth girls team of Anastasia Lipenkova, Alena Travkina, Nadezda Zhirikova and Ekaterina Teslyuchenko finally ended their dominance after they produced a fast second run to claim the gold ahead of the Czech Republic and Brazil.

The victory keep them right in the hunt for overall honours, now only trailing the Czech girls by 27 points.

All four girls hail from the Russian capital of Moscow and were delighted by their performance today, with slalom not being a favourite discipline of the girls.

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