(UPDATES with quotes)
Peter Kretschmer and Kurt Kuschela stroked to Olympic gold in the men's canoe double 1000 meters on Thursday.
Kretschmer and Kuschela overhauled Sergiy Bezugliy and Maksim Prokopenko of Azerbaijan with 250 meters to go, winning in three minutes, 33.8 seconds.
"It's a great day today. We had good tactics," said Kuschela. "The last 300 meters, I looked left and right and saw that we were winning."
His partner Kretschmer warned: "Now we party. The people in the German House had better be prepared."
Belarusian brothers and defending Olympic champions Andrei and Aliaksandr Bahdanovich and Aliaksandr shot through with the German pair into silver in 3:35.20.
"We started well," said Aliaksandr Bahdanovich. "Unfortunately, you don't get medals for a perfect start."
Russia's Alexey Korovashkov and Ilya Pervukhin took a surprise bronze, pipping the team from Azerbaijan to the bronze by less than a second in 3:36.41.
"It's our first Olympic Games and we wanted to win," said Korovashkov.
Germany last won this event at Athens 2004, when Christian Gille and Tomasz Wylenzek beat Russia's Alexander Kostoglod and Aleksandr Kovalyov.
