The men’s K2 200m final was all over in half a minute. The wait for the results seemed even longer. “Agony,” was how Jon Schofield described it, as he and Liam Heath sat in their kayak with six of the eight competitors in a photo-finish. “You almost don’t want to know, because until you know it could be anything and once you find out, that’s that.”
After that otherworldly hiatus – “You kind of forget to breathe,” said Heath – the scoreboard, which had already confirmed Spain’s Saúl Craviotto and Cristian Toro as the winners, revealed Britain’s pair had taken the silver.
They had taken bronze at London 2012 and, if their celebrations here were a little less wild, it was only because they had been warned.
“Last Olympics I smashed these paddles in half,” said Schofield. “I’ve been reminded before this race that they’re too expensive to do that again.”
Heath had turned 32 the previous day. He used to be a bartender and has admitted he’s looking forward to getting stuck into some caiparinhas, but he will have to wait a little longer to celebrate his birthday; he is a strong contender for the men’s K1 200m Friday. “I’ll have a slice of cake tonight,” said Schofield, smiling. Presumably he will save a piece for his partner.
The pair have been in the boat together six years now. They are close in age, in height, in weight and, as the kids say, IRL (in real life). “Do you ever get sick of the sight of each other?” they were asked in the mixed zone. “No, not really,” joked Heath. “I don’t have to look at him in the front.”
A ski-training camp in St Moritz this year gave them a break from the water and helped to build their fitness, although it did not seem to improve their cross-country skiing much. “We time-trialled at the start and improved by a couple of minutes,” said Schofield.
Still, it worked. The pair have grown “a lot, lot stronger” since the last Olympics although, as this race evidenced, so has the rest of the world. There was no more competitive field in the canoe sprint programme, with world champions in the Hungarian and Serbian boats and a gold medallist in the German one. Spain had won both World Cup and test events this year.
All bar Canada – a full second off the pace – were nose to nose as they dashed towards the line. Lithuania held the lead for a nanosecond, Heath and Schofield for the zeptosecond after. Their kayak ran across the still surface of the Lagoa like molten butter. “We’ve worked on lowering our stroke rate,” said Schofield, “and getting the most out of every stroke.”
“Everyone can hit the same top speed,” said Heath. “It’s who stays there the longest and reaches the end.” The winning time was only 0.024sec outside the Olympic best.
There were huge queues to get into the venue after hundreds of locals had headed out early to catch a glimpse of Isaquias Queiroz dos Santos, who had taken Brazil’s first ever canoeing medal with a silver in the men’s single 1,000m the day before and was up again in the 200m.
One positive of the Rio venues not quite being finished has been the absence of privacy screening and here locals lined the fences for a third of a mile with a clear view of the finish line.
Queiroz dos Santos’s personal timeline includes a scalding that nearly killed him as a toddler, a kidnapping at five years old and the loss of a kidney after falling from a tree when he was 10.
Under hazy sunshine he made a dramatic comeback from last place to secure a photofinish for the medals with Ukraine’s Yuriy Cheban and Azerbaijan’s Valentin Demyanenko, the Ukrainian straining so hard at the line that he was already halfway out of his boat, a leg in mid-air.
Queiroz dos Santos flung his paddle into the water and quickly followed it in, his head bobbing above the water as he waited for the results. The security checks prohibit items that cause “ruido excessivo” – excessive noise – but as the scores flashed up on the big screen, all the fans in the stands needed here were their lungs: he had another medal, this time bronze. Helped into a support boat he raised his arms and gave a low bow to the crowd.
Queiroz dos Santos will be a huge star after these Games; Heath and Schofield are just happy to be able to be full-time athletes.
In the past British canoeists like Tim Brabants and Ed McKeever had to juggle training with separate professions. Schofield took up canoeing as a boy scout but there has been no bob-a-jobbing for him. “I’ve just been paddling my whole life,” he said. “It’s a short race but a hell of a lot of training goes into it.”
