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How to play the London 2012 slalom canoe Google doodle

Google's keyboard onslaught continues for the third consecutive day with a game of London 2012 slalom canoe as its 14th daily doodle during the ongoing Olympic Games.

Curiously, this is the first doodle this Olympics by Google that has been posted after the featured event was over. Also playing the game can leave users with a pain in their hands.

This interactive doodle features a paddler in a yellow canoe trying to paddle his/her down a water course with 10 downstream gates marked with green striped poles.

To play the London 2012 slalom canoe users have to use the left and right arrow keys to accelerate (paddle faster) the speed of their canoes and the up and down keys to navigate.

The speed slows down, and time is added to the score when the canoe hits the banks, water animals or sedimentary rocks. Guiding the canoe through the green striped gates seem to get the canoe to move faster.

The faster a user reaches the finish line, the better the chances of Google bestowing the user with an additional star (the maximum is three) that can then be flaunted on Google's social networking service Google Plus.

Slalom canoeing involves athletes negotiating a 250 metre white water course that flows at a rate of 13 cubic metres per second, and drops 5.5 metres from start to finish.

Canoe Slalom made its debut at the Munich 1972 Olympic Games, but didn't become a permanent part of the Olympic programme until Barcelona 1992.

Modelled on slalom skiing, the first Canoe Slalom competition was held in Switzerland in 1932. The sport was staged on flat water during its early days, but was later switched to white-water rapids.

On Wednesday the interactive Google doodle let users play basketball using the space bar or by holding and releasing the left mouse key.

The first interactive London 2012 doodle was posted on Tuesday which let users participate in a hurdles race using use the left-right arrow keys to run and the spacebar to jump over the 10 hurdles in the race

- Umess Shanmugam