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Note: Clean Air Champions is a national charity that works with high-performance athletes to inspire Canadians to improve air quality and increase physical activity. It is not a property of the David Suzuki Foundation as this article states.
BEIJING–They needed someone to take their shirt off in Adam van Koeverden's kinesiology class at McMaster University one day.
The subject was how heart function changes when it's stressed during exercise. A cardiovascual physiologist had brought in some cutting edge technology, a Doppler ultrasound, and asked for a volunteer to have a probe attached to their chest and their heart function flashed up on a big screen.
Not shy about displaying a physique sculpted through hard work on the water, van Koeverden stepped forward.
The resolution on the screen was set up to view a regular heart. The Oakville kayaker's was just too big to fit on it.
So they zoomed out once. Still too big.
Twice. No luck.
Finally, after the third try, they got his heart up there.
"I have a big heart from both a literal and figurative perspective," said van Koeverden with a chuckle in recently recounting the story.
Tough to argue that.
These Games didn't pan out the way van Koeverden, or the nation cheering for him, had hoped, but if they were about taking the measure of the man then you're going to have to keep zooming out to get him up on that screen.
He experienced a fear here he'd never felt before after finishing a shocking eighth in the K-1 1,000 metres Friday. It pretty much brought him to his knees as a competitor, although he still managed to hold on for a silver yesterday in the men's K-1 500 metres, an event he's dominated since winning Olympic gold in it four years ago.
Among those watching him on and off the water was his mother, Beata Bokrossy, who took him down to the Burloak Canoe Club nearly 15 years ago with an eye towards keeping a bright kid with a lot of time on his hands out of trouble. She wasn't sure how someone who had known only winning would handle his first big dose of adversity.
"I have always, since the very beginning, worried about how he'll cope with not winning, because he just does the winning part so well," said Bokrossy. "He learned very early how to win gracefully and I was always very proud of that. He is dealing with not being No.1 as gracefully as he did winning. I'm proud of him still. It's a new thing he learned."
This is a well-spoken family, although Adam's younger brother, Luke, was doing his talking through a voice hoarse from shouting. His chest shaved so he could have a Maple Leaf painted on it, a flag draped around his shoulders like a cape, Luke van Koeverden had clearly found it hard to see his brother falter.
"He's always such a confident person," said Luke. "It's hard to see him down on himself like that. It hard to hear him apologizing for everything, because really he has nothing to apologize for. He's always such a confident person. I didn't struggle so much with it, but I just knew that he would bounce back because he always does. He's a strong person."
Bokrossy, whom van Koeverden credits with instilling in him his tenacity and stubbornness, was not impressed so much by her son's gold and bronze medals at his first Olympics in Athens four years ago. What made her proud was that he embraced being a role model and became involved in a number of good causes, including Right to Play and David Suzuki's Clean Air Champions.
"I mean as a young man of 22 to basically instantly recognize that he has a moment that he can do some good or help people and recognize he had a responsibility to give back to the paddling community and the people that supported him and Canada as well, I was very impressed that he just caught on to that immediately," she said.
Van Koeverden conceded yesterday he'd been affected by all the pressures he carried as a favourite into his races here after a stellar World Cup campaign in which he'd won five of six events.
His younger brother thinks it's time for him to chill out a bit.
"It's funny, I always tell him that he's too stressed out and that he just needs to take a break," said Luke.
"But we're two completely different people. He thrives on the drive and constantly going. I like to sit back and relax everytime I can.
"We just got a property up in Algonquin and, hopefully, that will be a nice place for us to relax. He can sit down and sit on the dock and watch the sunrise and sunset."
Their mother chuckles at hearing this, reminding him the modest property doesn't have a dock.
"We'll build a new dock." said Luke.
"Hopefully, he'll just find some time to relax and he can just appreciate that what's he's done is something amazing."
