The dream was within reach, but for Liam Jegou it very quickly turned into a nightmare. At the Kasai Canoe Slalom Centre in Tokyo today the 25-year-old Clare native endured a heartbreaking semi-final exit at the C1 slalom, leading his event two thirds of the way through his run only to miss a gate on the gushing rapids, which ended his Games in an instant.
Jegou went into the 15-man semi-final confident of securing a top-10 finish to advance to the final a couple of hours later, and midway through it was going according to plan. He was quickest of the first five competitors through checkpoints one and two, with 21 of 25 gates successfully navigated at breakneck speed. But then things quickly fell apart. Jegou lost his line and narrowly snuck through one gate, the issue throwing his focus and costing him at the next one, where his final chance disappeared in an instant.
“It was completely going to my plan, but out of that last sub-stream I just lost balance and ended up ducking in front of one of the gates and maybe it stayed in my head on the next move,” he said. “The next move, I’ve done in training 20 times and I haven’t missed it once, but that’s slalom. You’ve got to be very precise everywhere or else it’ll cost you the race and that’s precisely what happened today.
“I was having a great run, but maybe I switched that mindset of, ‘I’ll just finish it off,’ instead of, ‘I’ll attack the rest.’ I need some time to reflect on it, it’s very raw and right now I’m just really, really gutted. There’s a lot of work put into this, a lifetime of work, so to mess it up there on one of the final gates, I’m disgusted with myself.”
Jegou has been the leading Irish canoeist for a number of years, winning silver at the World Junior Championships in 2014 and bronze at World U23s in 2019. In 2019 he became the first Irish paddler to win gold at a C1 World Cup event in Pau, which is where he is based full-time. The 25-year-old was adamant he would come back stronger after his crushing exit in Tokyo.
“It’s going to be an hour now of me sulking and being a bit pissed off, after that it’s over, it’s in the past and I’ll enjoy going back for a paddle next week,” he said. “I love this sport and it’s the Games, it hurts, but there’s plenty of other races I’m excited to race this season.”
