Czech man mountain Josef Dostal won an Olympic medal on Saturday that even he was convinced, at the age of 31 and at his fourth attempt, might have past him by.
It had been a decade since he last won a kayak single 1000m gold medal at a major international event, and eight years since he won silver at Rio 2016. But in Paris, things felt different. There had been some big changes in the life of Dostal both on and off the water, and he was hoping the stars would align.
And they did. Dostal went our hard early, going stroke for stroke with Portuguese speedster Fernando Pimenta. At the 400m mark, he found himself in exactly the same place as he was in Tokyo, and that ended with him finishing fifth.
So this time he decided to put it all on the line. He surged, and when Pimenta couldn’t go with him, he knew his next challenge was to get far enough ahead that the Hungarian gold and silver medalists from Tokyo, Balint Kopasz and Adam Varga, couldn’t chase him down.
It worked to perfection – just. Kopasz could not match Dostal, but Varga was closing fast, and eventually fell just 0.07 seconds short.
The first question he was asked after he emerged triumphant – where did that come from?
“I don’t know,” he said with a grin wide enough to drive a bus through.
“This year, I changed my coach after many years of working together. I felt like it was time to change. We realised something had to be changed. After one year working together, we realised that the change we had made, was not good.”
So he turned to one of the biggest names in Czech canoeing history for advice – the family of canoe single 1000m gold medalist, Martin Fuksa, legends in the sport for generations.
“There was an idea to become better, so we made big plans around more training sessions, skipping the sweet food, which I love, I was eating more and lost a lot of weight,” Dostal said.
He lost about five kilograms. He also became engaged to fellow Czech paddler, Anezka Paloudova.
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And there were small changes. Well, small changes to the casual observer, but big changes in the mind of an elite athlete. Like cutting back on his fishing – he now restricts himself to just a couple of hours angling. Daily.
And like changing the colour of his boat, a signature look which had been part of the Dostal image for years.
“My usual black and yellow, was too mild,” he said.
“I wanted something more aggressive. So there’s now red and black.”
And maybe it was a memory from his childhood that gave him the extra impetus, especially in the last 250 metres when every muscle was screaming out to stop.
“It was my mum who told me when I was young to have big dreams,” Dostal said.
“I forgot about this for a couple of years. It was my father who told me yesterday, go and do whatever you want, I just want you to be happy and have a good memory from an Olympic final.
“I stood on my own, and I was picking up the pace, and now I’m the Olympic champion.”
Dostal said he had been dreaming often about what might happen in Paris. Real dreams, not daydreams. His dreams involved him winning medal.
“Having a medal for me was absolutely great, winning any medal. And now, standing here with a gold around my neck,” he said.
“Right now I’m really looking forward to standing in a river, hearing nothing, trying to catch a fish, knowing that I’m an Olympic champion.”
