Augsburg - The Slovenian men's team of Benjamin Savšek, Luka Božič and Anže Berčič have won the gold medal in the C1 team event at the Canoe Slalom World Championships in Germany's Augsburg on Wednesday to increase Slovenia's medal tally on the first day of the competition to two.

The gold medal comes after the women's kayak team of Eva Terčelj, Ajda Novak and Eva Alina Hočevar won silver in the K1 event.

With the three runs without any penalty points, with experts labelled as "a textbook example", the men's canoe team beat the second-placed Slovakian team by 2.94 seconds, while Italy finished third with a gap of more than five seconds.

This is the seventh World Championships medal for Slovenia in men's competitions in canoe and the second gold medal after 1993 in Italy's Mezzana.

"It was about time. We have been chasing this title many times, came close a few times, and now we've finally made it. I think it's well deserved," said Berčič, Slovenia's third man who has not had many successes in individual competitions.

"We got along perfectly from the very beginning ... we were in the attack mode all the time. Beni and Luka made a lot of space for me and I just followed them and made sure there were no touches or mistakes. It worked out," he added.

Božič added that "when we reached the finish line, we knew that we had done our job well," adding that the middle part of the course had been decisive.

Savšek, the gold medallist from the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, added the medal that he was missing to his tally. "I'm happy that we managed to get along so well. It was a textbook run, the boat kept running, and we were just pedalling," he said.