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Michal Martikán (; born 18 May 1979) is a Slovak slalom canoeist who has been competing since the mid-1990s. In 1996 he became the first athlete to win an Olympic Games gold medal for Slovakia 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 C-1 individual category four times. He is considered by many the greatest C-1 slalom paddler alive. ==Career== At the age of 16, Michal Martikán became the youngest winner of a World Cup slalom canoeing event.〔("Seeing is believing for Slovakia's Martikan" ) – ''Reuters''. August 12, 2008. Retrieved 2011-10-04.〕 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 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 of France. Competing in his third Olympics in 2004, Martikán again led the qualifying round. He also earned the highest score in the semifinals, 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. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London 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, Martikán had an uninterrupted medal run in the individual C-1 event between 1995 and 2010. The 2011 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships 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. However, he managed to win gold in the team event with his Slovak teammates to prolong his medal run. He won another three gold medals in the C-1 team event between 2013 and 2015, making it 14 straight World Championships with a medal. He won his first medals in 1995 when he was just 16. He took a bronze in the C-1 event and another bronze in the C-1 team event. In 1997 he won his first individual world title as well as team gold. He won the individual C-1 event on three more occasions (2002, 2003 and 2007). As of 2014 he has a total of 18 World Championship medals (11 golds, 3 silvers and 4 bronzes) which is more than any other slalom paddler in any category. He has also won the overall World Cup title five times (1998, 2000, 2001, 2006, 2014), which is a record among C-1 paddlers. At the European Championships he has won four straight individual golds between 2007 and 2010. Slovakia won the C-1 team event 9 times with him in the team. He also has 4 silvers (3 individual and 1 in team event) and 1 bronze (in the team event). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Michal Martikán」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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