On the opening day of competition in the European Canoe Association’s annual event, these two nations reached the top of the podium in the Ondrej Cibak Whitewater Stadium at Liptovsky Mikulaš in dramatic fashion.

The French trio of Camille Prigent, Romane Prigent and Emma Vuitton were the second to start in the women's kayak team event, but their performance was so good, involving only two penalty seconds, that it kept them in gold medal position all the way.

They finished 3.34 seconds faster than Britain’s silver medallists - Kimberley Woods, Mallory Franklin and Megan Hamer-Evans - who had a scary collision at gate twelve but still managed to earn silver.

Klaudia Zwolinska, Natalia Pacierpnik and Dominika Brzeska from Poland were third.

The Czech team of Jiri Prskavec, Vit Prindiš and Ondrej Tunka produced the fastest time in the men’s kayak team event but then a 50 second penalty appeared on the scoreboard and the judges had to revise the run again to make sure everything was judged correctly.

The Czechs stayed on top by 1.69 seconds from Polish kayakers Michal Pasiut, Dariusz Popiela and Jakub Brzezinski, while Germans Hannes Aigner, Noah Hegge and Stefan Hengst won bronze.

Increasingly windy conditions had created problems for some of the athletes starting later in the morning’s individual women’s and men’s kayak heats.

Britain’s Franklin produced the best run to win in the women's kayak heats, 0.83 seconds in front of Poland’s Klaudia Zwolinska, while Italian Stefanie Horn finished third in the first stage of the competition.

Austrian Felix Oschmautz was the best kayaker of the day in the men's event, with local athlete Jakub Grigar half a second behind him and Britain’s Joseph Clarke third.

But there were some upsets in the heats, notably involving the 38-year-old Czech paddler Peter Kauzer, who was seeking his third title but failed to make the semi-finals after two bad runs.

Olympic champion Jiri Prskavec of the Czech Republic also had to go into the second heats run but had the best time on that occasion to reach the semi-finals belatedly.

Britain's Kimberley Woods, Zuzana Pankova of Slovakia, Laia Sorribes of Spain, fellow Spaniard Klara Olazabal, Stefan Hengst of Germany and Isak Ohrstrom of Sweden also found themselves making an earlier than expected exit for the event.

Tomorrow the Championships continue with women's and men's C1 heats in the morning and canoe team events in the afternoon.