Qualification systems
A quota of 160 canoers (40 slalom and 120 sprint) will be allowed to qualify. Both slalom and sprint will have one qualification event each at the Pan American Olympic Festival, where a specific amount of boats per event will qualify. For the sprint events a total of three athlete quotas have been reserved for nations that have not qualified an athlete. A nation may enter a maximum of six male kayakers, four male canoers, five female kayakers, and one female canoer. A maximum of fifteen athletes can compete for a nation in sprint, while a maximum of six can compete in slalom. In slalom nations may choose to have the same athlete in the same event, reducing the number of athletes from forty. The remaining quotas (after teams select their squads) in sprint will be reallocated to countries not already qualified. The host nation (Canada) is guaranteed participation in each event, granted it partakes in the qualification events. Countries qualifying athletes in the K-1 and C-1 slalom events for men but not the C-2 event may compete in the C-2 event using athletes qualified in the first two events.
Contents
Qualification summary
Sprint
17 countries took part in qualification races. Out of those 17, ten managed to qualify a single quota. The remaining seven who competed (Barbados, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay) were eligible for the three remaining quotas reserved for countries not having any quotas at the qualification event. However the results of the Pan American Championships were used instead to determine the wildcards, with two of the previously nations not qualified (Guatemala and Dominican Republic) receiving a quota, along with the United States in the women's canoe event.