There is a part of me that can be competitive. I certainly brought a competitive spirit to earning grades in college. Susan’s and my grade point averages were so similar that you had to go to the third place after the decimal to determine that I had a slightly higher GPA than her. That’s right! .001 points was all that separated us. It was, of course, a friendly competition. We married after our third year of college. I would have never earned the grades that I did without her help. And I contributed to her academic success by typing some of her papers. We have approached life as a team for 51 years and it works for us. Still, there is an element of competition in our relationship.

I used to be competitive with my brothers. I had to learn as an adult not to compare myself with them and not to try to convert them to my ways of thinking and behaving. There were some pretty intense arguments along the way and it was a steep learning curve for me.

I have not, however, been a competitive athlete. There are a lot of activities that I enjoy while knowing that there are others who are far better than I. In school, I participated in basketball, wrestling, high jump and pole vaulting and did not stand out in any sport. I did not earn a letter in sports in my high school career. And I did not go out for an sports during my college career.

As an adult I have enjoyed skiing, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, and bike riding. I am not interested in any of those activities as a competitor, however. I just participate for fun.

I have, however, enjoyed watching others who compete in sport. When we were younger, I thought that one of the things I would like to do would be to attend the Olympic games. In 1988, we made plans to attend the Winter Olympics in Calgary. Our plan was to stay with cousins in Calgary and take my mother along to take in some of the cultural activities and visit Olympic Village as well as provide some childcare for us. Our children were too young to spend the amount of time outdoors required of those who watched downhill skiing events and tickets to stadium events such as ice skating were very expensive for our budget. As it turned out, however, we made our event ticket purchase not from the official vendor, but rather from a very deceiving scammer. Our check was seized as part of the investigation of the scam before it was cashed so we were not out any money, but by the time we found out about it, there weren’t very many event tickets available. We might have been able to be in the crowd for one downhill ski race, and perhaps one round of curling, but there were no tickets for medal rounds left. We decided that the entire trip was bit too expansive for us and cancelled.

I did watch a lot of Olympic highlights on television that year.

In the years since I haven’t watched as much, either in the winter games or the summer games. I catch headlines about the games from the sources I read on the Internet, but I haven’t watched any of the games live. There is, however, one paddler whose story captures my imagination. The Australian canoeist, Jessica Fox, has made the Paris games the high point of her career.

She started out with a healthy dose of genetic ability for sport. Her father competed for Great Britain, winning five K1 titles. Her mother won Olympic and K1 medals for France. Born in France, but growing up in Australia, she showed promise as an Olympic paddler early. She has earned a place on the Australian team for three successive games. She won silver as an 18-year-old at London in 2012, bronze in 2016 at Rio, and again earned bronze in Tokyo in 2020. She missed out on gold medals at those three games by a combined margin of six seconds. Olympic canoeing is won or lost on the slimmest margins of fractions of seconds.

The Paris Olympics of 2024, however, have proven to be her games. She won gold in canoe single just three days after winning kayak single gold. She is the first athlete to win two canoe slalom gold medals at any Olympics. She is also the only Olympian to have stood on the medal podium six times. And tomorrow she will compete in the time trials for the kayak cross event, a race that is marked by a bit of chaos and is always unpredictable.

She is an athlete worth watching.

Sports writers are including thoughts about her possible retirement from the sport in nearly every article about her success. At 30, she is getting old for an Olympic athlete. And she does appear to be at the peak of her game. Unlike sculling, which is a team sport, C1 and K1 are individual competitions.

I can tell that I’m getting older, too. I no longer feel the need to watch the competitions live. I’m happy to read about them a day or two later. And just reading about a 30-year-old earning Olympic Gold reminds me that I’m over twice her age. And that has me remembering that my whitewater kayak has not been in the water for five or six years. I’m not sure why I have kept that little red boat for as long as I have. I doubt if it has any value were I to try to sell it. Kayak design evolves rapidly and my boat is heavy and clunky when compared to the nimble boats available these days. I think it still has some fun in it for a heavier paddler who isn’t interested in winning any competitions. There are plenty of scrapes and bumps on it that are testament to fun that has already been enjoyed.

Even though I’ve never been a competitor, I’ve had a joyful life packed with fun activities that has included paddling. And I have witnessed greatness in the successes of true athletes who go for and sometimes win the gold. I’m glad that I’ve paid enough attention to read about Jessica Fox’s success.