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With competition at the 2026 Paddle Europe Canoe Slalom Championships now just hours away, Ivrea is preparing to welcome a field filled not only with Olympic, world and European champions, but also with athletes whose stories are closely connected to the Italian course.

The first races begin on Thursday morning, before the opening day concludes with four European team titles. Behind the start lists, however, there are several stories worth following throughout the championships.

For many athletes, this will not be their first European Championship experience on the waters of Ivrea.

According to the championship information system, 75 athletes competing in 2026 also raced at the 2021 European Championships in Ivrea.

Some return with completely different status.

Italy's Giovanni De Gennaro was silver medallist in men's K1 here in 2021. Five years later, he returns as the Paris 2024 Olympic champion and a 2026 World Championship bronze medallist.

Spain's Miren Lazkano has perhaps an even more direct connection with the venue. She won the women's C1 European title in Ivrea in 2021 and returns to the same course five years later.

Italy's canoe slalom tradition stretches across several Olympic generations.

Pierpaolo Ferrazzi became Olympic men's K1 champion at Barcelona 1992, Daniele Molmenti repeated the achievement at London 2012 and Giovanni De Gennaro brought the Olympic title back to Italy at Paris 2024.

Ferrazzi was also De Gennaro's coach, while Molmenti — Olympic champion, world champion and five-time European champion — is now Technical Director of the Italian Canoe Slalom team and has also worked directly with De Gennaro. ICF records describe Molmenti as De Gennaro's coach and former training partner.

The women's side of Italian slalom also has history represented in Ivrea. Stefanie Horn, who is entered in women's K1, shared the 2022 European title with Eliska Mintalova in the first joint gold in European Canoe Slalom Championship history.

Few categories illustrate the strength of the field better than men's C1.

Spain's Miquel Travé arrives as both the reigning European champion and reigning world champion.

But facing him will be the complete Paris 2024 Olympic podium: Olympic champion Nicolas Gestin, silver medallist Adam Burgess and bronze medallist Matej Beňuš.

It creates a rare situation in which the current Olympic champion, current world champion, current European champion and all three Olympic medallists will race in the same European Championship field.

Czech success has been one of the defining features of recent European men's K1 competition.

From 2020 to 2025, Czech paddlers won five of the six European titles: Jiri Prskavec in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025, and Vit Prindis here in Ivrea in 2021.

This time Czechia arrives with both defending European champion Prskavec and 2026 world champion Jakub Krejci.

There is another Czech streak to follow on the opening afternoon. The Czech women's C1 team has won the last three European titles, in 2023, 2024 and 2025. A fourth consecutive crown is now within reach.

If men's K1 has produced a period of Czech dominance, women's C1 tells almost the opposite story.

The six European Championships from 2020 to 2025 produced six different individual champions: Gabriela Satkova, Miren Lazkano, Mallory Franklin, Elena Lilik, Andrea Herzog and Monica Doria.

Several of them are back in Ivrea, but they will also face newly crowned world champion Tereza Kneblova.

That makes women's C1 one of the most open historical storylines of the championship: will the sequence produce a seventh different European champion in seven editions, or will one of the previous winners finally repeat?

The individual battles begin with the K1 and C1 heats on Thursday morning, but the opening competition day will already produce four champions when the team finals take place in the afternoon.

Some stories will take three days to resolve.

Others could start changing European canoe slalom history within the first few hours.