A QUIET CONFIDENCE
Now 34 and at his fourth Games, van Koeverden plans to go out wearing a medal
In his heart — and RIO DE JANEIRO more important what he feels in the fine-tuned body that has powered him to four Olympic medals — Adam van Koeverden believes he is a contender once more.
The 34-year-old paddler from Oakville, Ont., is wise enough in his sport and respectful enough of the competition to offer no guarantees.
But in this, his fourth and likely final Olympics, there is a quiet confidence that when he slides into his kayak over the next couple of days, he may be ready for some of the biggest and best races of his career.
“There’s nobody in this regatta I’ve never beaten,” van Koeverden said this weekend as he prepared for Monday’s qualifying heat and semifinal of the men’s K-1, 1,000 metres. “Absolutely I could (win a medal). Right now I’m paddling as well as I was two days before I started racing in London. I have every reason to be optimistic and positive and I am being that. But I also know I’m going into the pressure and into the dog ’s den and it’s going to be a fight.”
Based on his performances over the past four years, expectations would be muted for van Koeverden, certainly lower than in any of his previous Games. In Athens in 2004, he was young, aggressive and, in his words, a kayaker with “super powers” as he won bronze in the 1,000 and gold in the 500.
Four years later in Beijing, where external expectations got a little crazy, he took silver in the 500 and then, at the 2012 Games in London, he added silver in the 1,000.
Since then, there hasn’t been much in van Koeverden’s performances to suggest he is a medal contender at Lagoa, where the canoe and kayak races take place this week.
In fact, for a time after London, he not only stopped training, but stopped exercising altogether, a shocking move by an athlete who treated his body as a temple.
“That sucked and that was a bad choice,” van Koeverden said. “That was one of the main reasons I came back to training.”
There’s training and then there’s training for the Olympics, and Scott Oldershaw, his longtime coach both at the Burloak Canoe Club in Oakville and with the national team, recently has seen some of the old van Koeverden, some of the precociousness he showed when he first put a paddle in the water of Sixteen Mile Creek as a young teen.
“I expect him to go out and have his best race since London,” Oldershaw said when asked to assess van Koeverden’s medal prospects. “I think I’ll see that. I expect to see that. Where that puts him, that’s sort of up to everybody. The way he’s been going, I think he’ll have his best race in four years and I’m looking forward to that.”
Oldershaw has guided and mentored van Koeverden throughout an Olympic career that has spanned a dozen years, so he has a good feel for how he’s moving on the water and what’s circulating through his head. He’s seen the lows — and there have been a few — and he’s seen van Koeverden mature from an athlete who relied mostly on sublime physical skills to one who manages his body and his race strategy.
That’s part of what makes Oldershaw think this will be van Koeverden’s time once again and that he will find himself back on the podium around mid-day on Tuesday.
“You can just tell,” Oldershaw said. “It’s a kind of subtle thing. You can tell he’s focused. He’s really on top of his game. His training times are fantastic. He’s strong and fit. Mentally, he’s as strong as I’ve ever seen him. Once he made a commitment to Rio — he wasn’t going to come just to go to the Olympics, he’s done that — it was a 100 per cent commitment to get back on the podium.”
By van Koeverden’s own admission, that commitment wasn’t always certain. After finishing third in the Pan Am Games last summer, he didn’t race K-1 again for the rest of 2015. There were issues both physical and mental that were clouding his future, and for a while, Rio was nearly off the table.
“My iron was very, very low and I haven’t talked about that,” van Koeverden said when asked about his struggles last year. “People asked me if it was a mental thing, but my iron was super, super low and I was over-trained in some ways and under-trained in others. I wasn’t enjoying it. I wasn’t having fun. Enthusiasm and fun is the fuel. If you’re not enjoying it, then it’s a problem.”
So there were a couple of months late last summer and in early fall when van Koeverden had decisions to make. Did he have it in him physically to train for another Olympics? Was he mentally ready to re-invest?
“A great support network and personal reflection (helped),” van Koeverden said. “I had emphatic phone calls from a variety of people who insisted that I not give up.”
And once he decided to jump back in, it was all in. Van Koeverden spent some time training in Australia in October, working his way back into shape and sculpting his competitive edge by paddling with what he considers to be the best team in the world. He joined those paddlers again in Hungary earlier this year and before long, when he looked at his stopwatch and odometer, he was excited and rejuvenated by the results.
“It was really, really good preparation and attentive coaching from the Australian staff,” van Koeverden said. “They treated me exactly the same as their own athletes, which is amazing. Coming home, it was a good opportunity to get refreshed, sit with (Oldershaw), talk about our goals, talk about our preparations. With the two coaching situations, it was perfect.”
Over the next two days, we’ll see just how perfect that plan might be. Van Koeverden says besides himself, there are four serious medal contenders in his event. But he knows on his best day, he can race with and in front of each of them, because he’s done so in the past.
“I always think it’s possible,” van Koeverden said.
There’s nobody in this regatta I’ve never beaten. ... I also know I’m going into the pressure and into the dog’s den and it’s going to be a fight.