Former Canadian kayaker says becoming an Olympic champion was much harder than becoming an MP
In the summer of 2004, kayaker Adam van Koeverden was a 22-year-old preparing for his first crack at the Olympics, a fortnight that would ultimately transform the trajectory of his career and make him a household name in this country.
The native of Oakville, Ont., claimed one sixth of Canada’s medals at the Athens Summer Games, most memorably winning gold in the K-1 500-metre sprint, before being chosen the flag bearer for the closing ceremony and ending the year as the winner of the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s top athlete. Since then, van Koeverden has dabbled in a multitude of vocations. Following his retirement as an athlete after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, van Koeverden worked as a broadcaster and in management consulting, before successfully running in the 2019 federal election and being elected as a Member of Parliament for Milton, Ont.
You’re well known for your Olympic medals, and obviously now winning your seat. But what do you consider your greatest achievement? Empirically, I think winning the Olympics. I have to just be a little bit logical here. Winning the Olympics is really, really hard. It’s hard because it requires the confluence of happenstance, luck, hard work, and then a whole bunch of other people can’t get lucky at that same time. But I don’t know if winning the Olympics is the thing that I’m most proud of. It’s my biggest success for sure.
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