The Gift That Keeps on Giving

It is time for me to announce the end of a huge chapter in my life. For most of twenty years I have considered myself to be an elite slalom canoeist. From now on, I will be just a canoeist who hopefully does some other good stuff! I wanted to mark my retirement from competitive canoe slalom by looking back and giving my thanks for an amazing career.


When I went canoeing in the Scouts for the first time, I could barely swim. I am sure that I displayed no sign that one day I would be an Olympic champion and a consistent world-class competitor. On reflection, I really do see what canoeing has done for me. It strikes me a bit like Christmas when you are a kid, I have received so many gifts that my mind struggles to take it all in! But these gifts are not plastic toys; they are solid and I feel they will last a lifetime. Certainly a blog article cannot do them justice, so I have added links to other articles that I have written where I will attempt to more properly express and explain my gratitude.

Although I have won an Olympic gold medal at a home Olympics, and been successful at World, European and national level, I am sincere when I say that I value my journey in canoe slalom so much more. Along the way, I have learned so much. This knowledge is a treasure to me. I hope that I can use it in the rest of my life to help myself and also to help others to find their own truths. Through canoe slalom I have experienced life in a very special way. At times, I have lived with total freedom. In intense competitive situations, I was sometimes squeezed to place where I could truly experience the moment. It is hard to describe, but it is truly a beautiful thing. My journey has been shared with and supported by the most amazing people. It would have been impossible to do all this on my own, and the quantity of great people I have encountered makes me feel so lucky. Expressing the depth of gratitude I feel towards them is hard, saying a heartfelt 'thank you' here will be a start.

All of this is inside me now, it is a part of me. In the future, my ambition is to help people towards gaining the sort of freedom and knowledge that I have found. Although I hope that I will always be a canoeist, I feel that I have to venture beyond the boundaries of our sport to find a place where I can make a real difference to the world. I have no clue how I will find this place, or what exactly I will do when I get there, but I will consider my life to have been a good one if I can leave it behind having made a positive difference to lots of people. I hope I already have done, but I want to do more!

My plan is to keep paddling in my slalom kayak, but also to test out some other disciplines on the branches of our family tree. One of my big tasks is to spend more time with the people I love and to forge better connections with them. I also want to learn more and to connect more ideas together. I am looking forward to watching my teammates grow into legends, perhaps more so as people than as slalom athletes. I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have gotten to this point, and I am also extraordinarily fortunate to be have the full array of choices before me to take my life forward. I must thank you all and assure you that I will not waste my opportunities!!

Etienne

The Gift That Keeps On Giving: The People

The people I have gotten to know along this journey will always be with me. In fact, they are me, they have made me. From the beginning in the Scouts, to my final C2 sessions, I have had the most amazing good fortune in being around people who gave me a magical mixture of friendship, challenge, support, knowledge and energy.  I have decided to minimise the risks of missing anyone out by talking about groups of people and not naming names, with two exceptions. I hope this approach doesn't offend anybody, but I have faith that the right people will know what they mean to me.

• St. Andrew's Scouts - these guys put me into a boat for the first time and started me off. They showed me that not being mainstream was cool!
• Viking Kayak Club - the club's members supported and nurtured me, despite probably being quite annoying!
• My coaches - so many over the years. They shaped me and guided my growth. They trusted me and we collaborated to create some fantastic ideas and get some great work done. They are all close friends, helping me through tricky times on and off the water.
• My paddle buddies - from my youth to the present day, I have paddled with zillions of awesome people. Time spent canoeing with them is what makes canoeing great!
• My teammates - we travelled around, having fun and riding the ups and downs of our sport. 'Living the dream' with them was an thoroughly enriching experience.
• The canoeing scene - filled with great people whose warmth and support helped me to just be me. A diverse family of lovely people.
• My sponsors - over the years, many generous people helped me financially and materially. I am grateful for their kindness, it certainly helped me massively on my way.
• The bosses in British Canoeing and UK Sport - the investment and faith shown in me over the years has allowed me the rare privilege of being paid to better myself.
• My rivals - I have always endeavoured to behave decently towards my rivals, even though they often made me feel very uncomfortable and put me under a lot of pressure. They pushed me towards levels of performance and discoveries that I wouldn't have found on my own.
• My heroes - I was lucky enough to meet so many, all the way through my career, each spurring me higher. Each also showed me that they were just human, so why couldn't I be like them?
• My support staff through the years; performance lifestyle advisors, strength and conditioning coaches, performance analysts, nutritionists, press officers, team managers, logistics organisers, administrators and the many others who helped me to be my best - it was a true team effort, your dedication, friendship and energy contributed more than just 'marginal gains'.
• My physios and medical support - a big feature of my career were my injuries. They put me back together more times than I remember and helped me through some of my toughest times. I'd be a wreck without them!!!
• My psychologists - who walked with me on the toughest path towards self-understanding and self-acceptance (it's a journey not a destination). Their support helped me to find my wings and my place.
• Tim Baillie - it is almost impossible to express the gratitude that I feel. A truer gentleman and friend it would be hard to find. A man I share so much with. A man who voyaged alongside me through an amazing portion of my life. We grew and we flew together. 
• Mark Proctor - We forged a team and a friendship which taught me so much more than I expected. He showed his quiet toughness and bravery bumping along with me on that famous Road to Rio. We did something quite amazing together, and the value of these experiences will increase as time passes. He is continuing his journey on his own now, but I know he has all he needs.
• My family - my parents, my sister and my wife. It is telling that I am only just beginning to understand what the impact of being close to this man on a mission might have been. I guess that they understand, and I hope they have felt rewarded, but I have no doubt that it was hard and that sometimes they might have felt like they were playing second fiddle. In this new future, things will be different for sure.

So to all those who have contributed to my journey so far, I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. You will always be a part of me, you will always be with me. Whatever I do in the future, I will be using what you gave me. What a truly incredible bunch of people you are!!!!!

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: The Moment.

One experience will always tower above the others in my slalom career and there is no prize for guessing which! In London 2012, and on a few other occasions in my career, I managed to experience a clarity of mind which I think is extremely rare. Some people describe it as the 'zone', but I just think it is experiencing the present in a very vivid way, where there is no space in your mind for the usual cluttering background noise of thoughts of the past or present. Experiencing 'the moment', for me, is probably one of the most special things that happened in my career. In those moments, I felt a great freedom and I felt able to completely express all my physical, mental and emotional energy. I felt alive and incredibly powerful.

Ironically, on the most important occasions, when you want to be at your most powerful, at your clearest, it is often the case that your mind is standing in the way. The Olympics is one such important occasion. A home Games is an even rarer opportunity. To be approaching the peak of your abilities when a home Olympics is happening is precious. That makes it so much more challenging, yet so much more important to live in the present in those extraordinary times.

I can say that on the 2nd August 2012, I experienced the moment in our race runs. I was able to express everything that I was at that point. I had worked really hard to think about all the things that would pull me away from the moment around the Olympics. That meant looking into the past and trying to make peace with as much of it as possible. I thought that under the pressure of the Olympics, under that scrutiny, my regrets and guilt might come back to haunt me and so throw me off track. I thought that if I could look as far as I dared into that dark closet, then I might be able to expose some of the beasts that might burst out when I least wanted. I also looked into the future, imagining a future that started with a mediocre/poor/bad/terrible/shameful performance at the Olympics. I imagined myself having a tantrum at the bottom of the course; I imagined having a massive argument with Tim in front of curious BBC cameras; I imagined people I knew being ashamed of me. It was a liberating experience! I realised that I would probably be ok and that people who really knew me and cared for me would feel the same no matter what happened. It made me realise that perhaps all of these things might not be as bad as I imagined, and also, I think it made them actually less likely to happen as a result.

When it came to doing our runs on the day of the Olympic final, there was only what was in front of me: Tim, our boat, the line, the gates and the water. There was just an intention, coupled with a deep determination to put our boat where we had agreed to. I remember only a small amount from our run in the Semis. I was just out there doing my thing. I recall a massive, "Ooooooh", when we span out on the back straight, and a massive cheer that went up when we got back on line, but that's about it. My memories of the Final are even more obscured; I really can't remember very much at all. I have a small memory of the crowd roaring as we came towards the bottom drop, but that is it.

When we crossed the line things started getting wild! And they got wilder, and wilder, and wilder! It was like being in the middle of a whirlwind. The whole world was going bananas, and we were just us, stood there... My life went into a parallel track that day, but I suppose that's happening all the time. Lots of amazing and strange things happened to me after that, and in another world, we didn't win, and I am doing just fine too. But how could I not be grateful to the laws of chance for bringing such an unlikely scenario to vivid life?!!!

It's not just the Olympics where I have experienced 'the moment'. The first time was in selection in 1997, racing my kayak at Holme Pierrepont for a place in the Junior team. I spent a long weekend in some amazing mental space up at Grandtully for U23/ Senior selection in 2002. I went into Matrix-style bullet time at La Seu in 2008 at the end of the most miserable season of my life. Several times before and since London 2012 I managed to allow my mind to get out of its own way and just 'be'. I was so proud and happy that in my final international C2 race, the European Championships in Liptovksy this year, I managed to let the sense of occasion dissolve, freeing my skills and mind to race close to its highest height. I have had to work very hard, for a very long time, enduring great difficulties and frustrations to be able to get to that place. But to experience a freedom like that, where you are essentially free of everything, is just a great privilege and one that I must be unsure of ever encountering again, which makes it all the more precious.

One thing that I am sure of, however, is if I hold onto that memory too tightly, my mind will be dragged into the past. If I strive too hard to attain it, or re-create it, I will be being dragged into the future. Neither place is where I believe that the magic can happen: that is, right now. This exact and unique moment.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving: The Knowledge

I think the most valuable lesson that I have learnt and lived, is that it is impossible to know what you can do until you've tried to do it, either succeeding, or failing and learning from it. When I started out at Viking Kayak Club in the early 90s, I truly, and naively, believed that it was just a matter of time and some training before I would be a multiple Olympic and World Champion! Looking back at my young self, I think all I would have seen was naked ambition and probably a willingness to work hard. In the end, I got to become an Olympic champion just once, but I now know the true efforts required. When I dislocated my shoulder six months before the 2011 Worlds I thought that there was a chance to go on from there, and not only go to the Olympics, but win them! Looking back now, what would I have seen? Someone with an almost impossible task ahead of them, but with a plan in his back pocket. Amazingly, I went on to win the Olympics with a reconstructed shoulder, so it was clearly possible, but it probably wasn't realistic. At the 2015 Worlds, when I tore a muscle in my side a few days before racing started, I thought that it would be an impossible and pointless exercise to race. From here, I see a guy who was terrified of failing to rise to the challenge, when he knew he was expected to, and knew that if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to look at himself in the same way again. But I went on to race and we came 6th. I know that I considered something like that to be impossible at the time, yet it happened.

From all these experiences, I shamelessly extrapolate upwards and outwards, beyond myself and to people in general. It isn't hard at all to find examples of people doing things that are deemed extraordinary in some way or another, normally because something about the person involved doesn't quite match the size of their accomplishment. Often, we would perceive these people as normal, or maybe even disadvantaged in some ways. Their achievement is out of proportion to this perceived starting point. I so fundamentally believe that we are all capable of more than we credit ourselves with that it fills me with a faith and a buzz for the future that I can scarcely contain!

I also learned that no matter what we start out with, it is our desire and action towards building on that quantity which I believe is the determinant to success. Put another way, it is less important how big or small we feel our pile of any given quality is; it is what we choose to do to add to that pile that gives us a unique power. I do not believe that I had any real talent for canoeing. I'd go so far as to say that I was clumsy, uncoordinated and un-athletic. I got flustered and frustrated, I didn't know my left from my right and I was a poor team player. It seems outrageous to me that I became an Olympic champion in a technical, physically demanding team sport!!! (And I still get frustrated and flustered.)

I have realised that my journey in elite canoe slalom has in fact been a journey in self-understanding, and if I am being really brave, a journey in self-acceptance. People tell me that understanding and acceptance is a never-ending journey, but I am further along the way than I could be. I have been privileged to have been supported to look into the darkest areas of myself, the areas that I feel ashamed of and scared to look into, for fear of discovering a worrying truth. I believe competing under pressure, and working day-to-day in an intense competitive environment have driven me to learn about my flaws, my cracks. These cracks were exposed and widened when I was trying to do something that I wasn't sure if I could do. This pressure, coming from myself and how I saw the world, consistently and repeatedly revealed my weaknesses, so that I could get to see them clearly. Once I could see them clearly, I could try to understand them and from there either work with them, or try to get change them.

I am grateful for this, because I think I might have been able to conveniently skirt around them doing something else. For me, learning skills, ideas and strategies that I can use in situation where I feel the pressure has been so useful, and it has been rewarding. But learning that I can learn skills to compensate for, or even change, areas where I feel I want to be better has been even more useful and rewarding. I also believe that anyone can do this if they want to go through the process of understanding their 'weaknesses', which can be difficult and challenging. Because I don't think I had huge amounts going for me when I set out on this journey, and I managed to learn these things, why can't anyone else? Again, that fills me with a great buzz, because what if we were all a bit better at dealing with pressure, however that squeezes us? Perhaps things would be calmer, more gentle and more productive.

It might seem an odd thing to say, but one of the most important things that I have learned is that I have learned to be me. Certainly, being in a competitive environment can be quite intense and I am certain that I have had to wear some parts of myself more outwardly than others (some people call it a 'front', or an 'armour'). But over the years, as I have learned about myself, I feel that two things have happened: first, I have come to see competition as less threatening than before. It didn't have to be as personal as I imagine, it's just that sometimes others want what I want. In that case, you might not need as much armour; second, I realised that being me wasn't that bad, there are lots of people who are a bit strange out there. Everyone is probably spending some effort on being normal when in fact if we could just de-escalate that situation a bit, things would be easier all round. A bit like when the US and the USSR decided to get rid of an equal amount of nuclear weapons - it didn't really effect the status quo, it just took less effort on their parts to maintain this arsenal.

As I have been able to save some energy by not having to choose and maintain what I thought was the right me in some situations, I have been able to use that energy to do things that I wanted to do. Like getting better at canoeing, or being a better teammate, or making jokes. I don't want to pretend that I have been 100% me all the time in the past and I know it wouldn't be sensible to suggest that I will be able to do this all the time in the future, but I now the benefits of trying. So I am going to try.

The above ideas are probably the biggest and most important things that I have found out so far. Canoeing gave me them, or more accurately, they were revealed to be by the practise of canoeing and racing. That buzz, that knowledge, is a gift that I hope to draw on for all my days. And they are things that I hope people might enjoy reading about, or gain something by thinking about them in relation to themselves. I believe that we all have to struggle to unearth and refine our own truths. But I am hoping that someone, somewhere might get a bit of a leg up to figuring out something about themselves by reading this.