Lucien Delfour doesn’t want to dwell on what happened at this year’s World Canoe Slalom Championships in London.
The official record says he finished 45th, and he knows he was well below his best.
“I don’t think it was reflective of my level at all, it was really disappointing,” Delfour said this week, before heading to Rio for an Olympics test event.
“I think it showed I wasn’t ready to race, I wasn’t really in a good state of mind. I obviously could have done a lot better.
“On the day I just didn’t feel quite right, I didn’t feel excited to race.
It wasn’t exactly a good experience, but I just have to leave it behind me.”
Delfour wasn’t alone in London. Many of the world’s top paddlers struggled on the 2012 Olympic course.
But what made it harder for the 26-year-old was the purple patch of form he had run into in the lead-up to the Worlds.
He picked up bronze medals at consecutive World Cups, and was officially rated second in the world going into the biggest event of the year.
“Deep down I now it wasn’t my best at all,” he said.
“I should at least be in the top ten. When I saw the semi-final I could see the guys weren’t paddling well.
“I’ve decided to disregard the results because it doesn’t mean that much. I just need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Delfour took ten days off after the World Championships, but has been back training two times a day since.
Next week he’ll compete alongside some of the world’s best paddlers at the Olympic test event in Rio.
He’ll also get plenty of valuable opportunity to train on the course
“We’ve only seen one or two videos of the course, so we kind of know what it looks like,” he said.
“We know it’s going to be hard physically, it’s sort of like London.
“We’re going to have about 15 days, so at the end we should have a fairly good idea of what we should be doing at training for the next few months to get ready.”
And even though Delfour didn’t perform at his best at the World Championships, Australia did qualify a boat for the Rio Olympics, courtesy of Jaxon Merritt finishing 29th.
Which sets the scene for a thrilling Australian qualification competition early next year.
“It was a little bit disappointing that I didn’t qualify the boat,” Delfour said.
“It doesn’t change anything, I just have to win the selection. The results of the worlds don’t matter now, it’s all about the selection.”
Olympic silver medalist, Jessica Fox, will also travel to Rio, but won’t be competing in the test event.
