It’s fitting that after poring so much of his life into Rio in the past 12 months, New Zealand K1 paddler Mike Dawson should finish with a career best Olympic result.

Dawson finished 10th in a very strong and very fast final, an improvement on his 15th at the London Olympics and whetting his appetite for Tokyo 2020.

While every international athlete will leave these Olympics talking about their “Rio experience”, very few will have actually ‘had’ a true Rio experience.

Dawson has though, well and truly. After deciding to base himself in the city in the build-up to the Games, he set out to learn more about the city and its people.

It’s been a life-changing experience, and not just for Dawson. He was part funding his Olympic campaign by selling a cookbook he had authored, and was so moved by what he saw, he started handing out food parcels in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

“It’s been pretty eye-opening coming here,” he said.

“It’s a city of two contrasts. It’s amazing, you see the crowd and the people and they are right behind the Olympics, but outside of that there is a lot of poverty, and they are having a hard time getting by day-to-day.

“We’ve tried to meet them and share in their moments a little bit, and hopefully they can share in our moments on the sports field as well, and we can leave some sort of legacy.”

Dawson had a perfect semi-final run, streaking down the tricky course in just over 91 seconds to qualify fifth for the final.

And he thought he was on track to go even better in the final, until a little mishap mid-run.

“We had a good semi run, so we decided to change just a couple of little things and try and do the same run,” he said.

“I actually let go of my paddle, I felt my hand slip off the paddle at gate 16, I got it back but I was off my line a little bit.”

And while nearly everyone else at the DeodoroWhitewater Centre may have been shocked by the win by Great Britain’s Joe Clarke, Dawson was expecting him to go well.

“I knew Joe was in good form,” he said.

“We’ve been training a bit together, he’s strong, he’s one of the guys you watch because he is so dynamic and so fast around the poles.

“It’s good to see him deliver in a high pressure situation, and it’s good to see a good buddy take the gold.”

So now 29-year-old Dawson has to turn his attention to Tokyo in four years. After having to write and sell a cookbook to help cover his preparation costs for Rio, he’s not daunted by the prospect of having to do it all again.

Especially when he looks back at his journey of the past Olympic cycle.

“It’s been an amazing four years,” he said.

“In 2012 it was just me and my old man, ripping around the circuit, now I’ve got a cool team, I’ve got support from high performance, I’ve got great support from New Zealand with my cookbook.

“I’ve learnt heaps in the past four years, it’s pretty humbling to have had that experience, because I know that a lot of athletes would love to have had the type of support that we have had over the past four years.

“I’m not in sport to make money, I just love it. You do have to fund it, that’s the Catch 22. I just love paddling, and if I enjoy it still in the next couple of years I will keep on going until Tokyo, if not I’ll go and find something else to do.”

And if he does decide to head to Tokyo, he definitely wants to base himself in that city for the lead-up.

“It’s so crucial,” he said.

“Everyone who is on the podium today has spent a lot of time here, it’s so important to spend as much time as you can in Tokyo, you have to turn it into your home.”

Sounds like an opening for a new Japanese cookbook.

Canoe Slalom
#ICFslalom