France is hosting the ICF Wildwater Canoeing World Championships ©Getty Images

Four reigning world champions are due to defend their titles at the Wildwater Canoeing World Championships in Treignac, where competition starts tomorrow.

Sprint and classic events are both on the programme for the first time since 2018, following of a period of coronavrius-related disruption.

In both 2019 and 2021, only sprint wildwater world titles were on offer, when the event merged with the International Canoe Federation's (ICF) Canoe Slalom World Championships.

But both disciplines are on the agenda in French venue Treignac, which staged the ICF's first Wildwater World Championships in 1959.

Czech paddler Ondřej Rolenc is slated to defend his men's C1 sprint title, Slovenian Nejc Žnidarčič the men's K1 sprint crown and Italy's Cecilia Panato the women's C1 sprint title.

Simon Oven, another Slovenian athlete, is defending the K1 classic title, but will also be gunning for sprint success.

Frenchwoman Manon Hostens was second in the K1 classic in 2018, but won the world title in the discipline in 2016.

Hostens is also a former sprint world champion.

Wildwater canoeing is a non-Olympic discipline not dissimilar to canoe slalom, but it takes place on class-two to class-four whitewater.

Classic courses can be up to six miles in length, whereas sprint events can be on passages of water as short as 200 metres.