The Hungary team that won gold in the men's K4 1000m event at the European Games in Baku have said that it is a "good sign" ahead of the World Championships.
Daniel Pauman, Zoltan Kammerer, David Toth and Tamas Kulifai needed a strong finish to beat Russia in the final, while Belarus finished third.
Toth told reporters: "All the strong countries are here, except for the Australians. To be able to win here is a good sign for us.
"In Hungary it often is harder to qualify for international races than to win a medal at those tournaments. We have two qualification moments back home. The first one was before these Games and the second is three weeks after this. We hope that the federation will appoint us for the world championships without this selection [race]."
Pauman added: "There was a hard headwind so we decided to save energy in the first 500m and then speed up in the second part of the race. In Moscow [at last year's World Championship] we had the problem that we were not able to speed up in the second part, so that's why we had another race plan here."
Pauman will be in action again later in the K1 5000m final.
