Chaloupka improved on his silver medal from last year to win the men’s under-23 C1 world title with a time of 80.57sec.

He had an agonising wait to find out if he had won, having gone fourth in the final.

"It’s amazing, I’m speechless," Chaloupka said.

"I was so nervous. Of course I wished the best for the rest of the field, they are all friends, but I was so nervous just to stand there and watch each of them come down."

Raffaello Ivaldi won the silver in his home town and Frenchman Cedric Joly taking the bronze.

In contrast to Chaloupka, Prigent was the last athlete on the course in her final of the K1. 

Her time of 89.31 was comfortably quicker than Austria’s Lisa Leitner in second, who went down in 92.64.

Afterwards Prigent said she could not believe it.

"I felt good on the water, but it was hard because we did a lot of sessions," she said.

"So I was always feeling stressed.

"It’s easier when you are last on the course, because when I come to the bottom I know the result.

"I didn’t look at my time, I just saw I was ranked one and I was, like, no!"

Elsewhere in the competition, Spain’s Miquel Trave and Slovenia’s Eva Hočevar comfortably won the junior men’s C1 and women’s K1 events respectively.

Trave secured his title with a time four seconds faster than second place, Italy's Flavio Micozzi, while Hočevar won by more than three seconds from Slovakia's Soňa Stanovská.

France's Nicolas Gestin won the bronze medal in the junior men's C1 and Switzerland's Naemi Braendle in the women's K1.