“I got into paddling through my uncle, he was doing it when he was a kid and grew up training with Jason Rusu and then my sister started doing it then when I was a kid I just wanted to do it. Eventually my parents caved and let me do it when I was a little too young. I went to the club for the first time when I was 7 and then I actually got to join paddling when I was 8 then I started canoeing when I turned 10. The community’s probably like the biggest thing that keeps you coming back because it’s pretty easy to just give up on any sport I feel, like no matter how good you are you just get bored of it, it’s really hard to get bored of people so it’s like a pretty big community in paddling and it’s really hard to want to leave it.
Most of my inspiration comes from the people at the club and the people from it, when I was younger I was really inspired to be like all the older paddlers at the club, like Dylan Land then by my old coach Jon Stewart, he was a really big guy and really came off technically sound and I just always kind of wanted to paddle like that. Since then my inspiration has just come from the people around me like my parent’s trying to support me, my C2 partner Brady.” – Gavin Jaeger-Freeborn, Canadian Canoer. (1/4)
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