“My mom got me into paddling, I use to do a lot of other sports beforehand and she was like ‘hey do you want to do this summer program?’ at Point Claire Canoe Club, and I was like ‘alright!’ and it was just a summer program, it was two times a week, I was 14, I’m 31 now.
I was at Point Claire, we moved to Oakville, Ontario and I started paddling for Mississauga. It was good, it was a good training group and then I was getting close to University and had to figure out if I was going to University or not. I was still trying to make the team, it wasn’t happening, I kept missing out, I kept missing out by 1 person or by 1 point so I was kind of getting frustrated and I said you know what I think I’m going to go back to school, focus on University, have a social life and see if I really want this later. Then when I went to University I was still kind of training and doing other things, I was training on my own. I tried things, I joined the track team, I also brought my boat down but I only paddled for a month so I kind of stopped doing that. I used the rowing machine a lot, did cross country skiing a lot, but I was always coming back in the summer to paddle so at that point I decided that I wanted to continue on, and I was like ‘I think I’m going to try for 1 more year’. And it was my coach from Mississauga that said ‘you know I think you should try this guy at Balmy Beach, I think he’s going to get you to the level you want to’, so I committed and said I’ll give myself a year, and if I make it then great, if I don’t I’ll just start my career outside of paddling. And I ended up making the team in like 6 months so it was great, it was awesome so I said ‘alright I’ll stick with it!'” – KC Fraser, Olympic Kayaker, Pan Am Games Gold Medallist. (1/7)
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