After years of toil, Clare canoeist is about to live his Olympic dream
From tackling Clare tides with his sister to suiting up for Ireland at the Olympics later this year, Liam Jegou has been on an incredible journey...
‘THE FIRST TIME I PADDLED WAS IN MY DAD’S BIG GREEN PLASTIC BOAT’
LIAM JEGOU became a name to know for all sports trivia buffs during the week. On Wednesday, the Olympic Federation of Ireland revealed the Clare native was the first athlete to be officially selected for this summer’s games in Tokyo in the C1 event for Canoe Slalom.
Jegou happened to be in the United Arab Emirates when he learned that his ticket to Tokyo had been booked, in the middle of a two-week block of warmweather training.
‘We are in a place called Al-Ain, about an hour and half outside Dubai, they have an artificial whitewater course here,’ he explained from the Middle East on Thursday afternoon.
The 24-year-old admitted that the previous 24 hours had been a little crazy. Canoeists and kayakers aren’t used to so much attention in this country.
‘There was a lot of media work, a lot of notifications coming through on my phone. But it’s pretty amazing, at the same time. It has taken around 12 years of hard work, dedication and training, just thinking about achieving the objective of getting to the Olympics, which is the absolute pinnacle of our sport. I am just looking forward to it now.’
The Olympic dream formulated in Jegou’s mind as a 12-year-old watching all the action from Beijing in 2008. It was at those games that Slovak legend Michal Martikán claimed his second gold in the C1 event (which Jegou competes in), while Ireland’s Eoin Rheinisch narrowly missed out on the podium in the K1 event.
‘Eoin came so close to getting a medal for Ireland, and I remember my dad saying to me that I could compete for Ireland in the
Olympics some day. That was the start of it and then I watched Martikán win and heard how he had won his first Olympic gold at 17. I didn’t quite manage that, but I have achieved my goal of reaching the Olympics now.’
Beijing may have focused Jegou to dedicate his life to following his dream, but he took the first steps in this journey off the west Clare coast.
His father Marc ran a kayak store in Ballyvaughan and took Liam and sister Chloe out into the North Atlantic in a boat borrowed from the shop. ‘The first time I ever paddled, my father brought us out in a big, green plastic boat, I was hooked soon after that.’
When Jegou was seven, Marc was offered a coaching job in his native France, so the family upped sticks and moved to Huningue, close to the borders with Germany and Switzerland. But Jegou never forgot his
Irish roots.
Not that his mother,
Denise would have let him.
Family holidays were often back to
Clare or Foxford, where his grandmother lived.
All the while, he started to develop the ambition of paddling for Ireland in international competition. ‘Canoe Slalom isn’t a big sport in Ireland, but we do have a proud history, especially in the Olympics.
‘Mike Corcoran [the last competitor in C1] did very well in the Barcelona Olympics in ’92, Ian Wiley came fifth in K1 [Kayak] in Atlanta in ’96 and won a European title and Eoin was fourth in Beijing and won a World Cup event. I’m very proud to be following in their footsteps, it is great to be part of that history.’ Jegou’s potential first came to the fore in the 2014 World Junior championships in Australia when he paddled superbly to claim a silver medal, just behind Germany’s Florian Breuer.
Having only just missed out on qualification for Rio after an excellent performance in the 2016 European championships, Jegou qualified for an Olympic solidarity grant, which made things a little easier.
But there were other stumbling blocks. A bad hip injury curtailed much of his 2017 season and halted all the momentum that had built up. He decided to move to the city of Pau in the south of France where he has fallen under the tutelage of Nico Peschier, who competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and is training with members of the French squad. The new coaching set-up came about through Corcoran, whom Jegou met at a World Cup final in 2018. ‘Mike (Corcoran) decided to sponsor me and help with my coaching fees.
‘That was a big game-changer and it meant all I had to do was put the work in,’ he explained.
The season starts next weekend for Jegou with a competition in Brittany for the French Division one league. ‘It won’t mean much in terms of my season, but it will be good to get back in the water again.’
From there, Jegou will move on to the ICF (International Canoe Federation) events, with the first one taking place in the Swiss city of Basel next month. There are also plans to travel to Tokyo in March and April to familiarise himself with the Olympic course, having been impressed by the 10 days he did there in November.
The difference between C1 and K1, which Wiley and Rheinsich excelled in, is that C1 has athletes using a single-bladed paddle to propel the boat forward while kneeling, while in K1 is seated and athletes use a double-bladed paddle.
‘In canoe slalom, you are basically in a boat with a single paddle,’ Jegou explained.
‘There are 20 gates on a white water course and you go through all the gates as fast as you can without touching or missing them. If you touch one, it’s a twosecond penalty. If you miss one, it’s a 50-second penalty. The margins are very tight, if you miss a gate, it is pretty much over. If you touch a gate, it is difficult.’
The powerhouses in the sport are Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Slovenia.
‘They are the nations with the tradition and have the best highperformance programmes and best coaching programmes and it comes through in competition.’
However, Jegou sees no reason why Ireland can’t be a top nation in canoe slalom, despite having no facilities, and thinks plans to create a white water course in the IFSC can help develop the country as a canoe power.
‘To be at the top in our sport, you have to live outside Ireland, it is the only way to compete with top nations. But if we had our own white-water facility, I believe Irish canoe slalom could compete with the best in the world. We have all the other facilities.’
Even though he has competed in some of the biggest canoe events over the past few years, the Olympics is a different level because of its sheer scale and magnitude and Jegou has begun preparations into dealing with its size.
‘I will be well-rehearsed. I will just go through the same routine I always do before I paddle. And just go out there and enjoy it.’
From Ballyvaughan in Clare to Foxford in Mayo and from Hunnigue in the north of France down to Pau in the south, there will be plenty of eyes on Liam Jegou as he takes to the water in Tokyo.
It will be the moment a journey that began as he helped his father and sister tackle the tides around west Clare reaches the destination he always dreamt it would.