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Emanuel Silva

GOIH
Emanuel Silva
2008 Emanuel Silva.JPG
Silva in 2008
Personal information
Full name Emanuel Eduardo Pimenta Vieira Silva
Nationality Portuguese
Born (1985-12-04) 4 December 1985 (age 31)
Braga, Portugal
Sport
Country Portugal
Sport Canoeing
Event(s) K-1

Emanuel Eduardo Pimenta Vieira Silva, GOIH (born 4 December 1985), is a Portuguese sprint canoer. He was born in Braga. A finalist at the 2004 Olympics and medalist at the 2012 Olympics, he is Portugal's most successful kayak sprinter since the 1980s.

Despite training with very limited resources, Silva became outright Portuguese individual champion over three distances (500 m, 1000 m and 10,000 m) at the age of just sixteen.

In 2003 he starred at the world junior championships in Komatsu, Japan, winning the K1 500 m gold medal and silver in the K1 1000 m. He then competed in his first senior world championships, in Gainesville, USA, placing a highly-creditable sixteenth in the K-1 1000 m.

In 2004 he reached his first senior final, finishing in seventh place at the European championships in Poznań, Poland. Still only eighteen years old, and technically a junior, he was the second-youngest competitor in the blue riband K-1 1000 m event at the Athens Olympics and exceeded expectations by reaching the final. There he finished in seventh place in a time of 3:33.862.

He followed up his Athens success by winning the 2005 European Under-23 Championship K1 1000 m final in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Later in the season he won the first senior medal of his career, the K1 1000 m bronze at the European Championships in Poznań, Poland.

In 2006 he retained his European under-23 title at Schinias, Greece. In senior competition he achieved his best-ever world championship placing, seventh, at the World Championships in Szeged.


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