2015 ICF World Championships Slalom
 
1
2
3
K1M
CZ J. PRSKAVEC
PL M. POLACZYK
US M. SMOLEN
K1W
CZ K. KUDEJOVA
DE R. FUNK
DE M. PFEIFER
C1M
GB D. FLORENCE
SI B. SAVSEK
GB R. WESTLEY
C1W
AU J. FOX
CZ K. HOSKOVA
ES N. VILARRUBLA
C2
DE ANTON/BENZIEN
FR PICCO/BISO
FR KLAUSS/PECHE

Canoe Slalom

Olympic Champion Stott confirms new partner is Proctor as the pair start on road to Rio

canoe kayak mark proctor etienne stout c2 slalom great britain bcd icf sportscene

Olympic Champion Etienne Stott missed most of what should have been a post London season of glory when he suffered a serious shoulder dislocation. Then early in 2014 his Olympic crewmate Tim Baillie announced his retirement, which left Stott with an uncertain future.

But things have taken a dramatic turn for the better this month. Now 99 percent fit and working hard to regain the final range of movement in his shoulder, Stott has joined forces with new crewmate Mark Proctor as the pair begin their campaign for the Rio 2016 Games.

Stott had earlier this season jokingly referred to his hunt for a new partner as being like ‘dating’. His aim was to find the best possible crewmate from among the talent pool available in the UK.

As luck would have it Proctor, long term GB senior team C1 competitor with a background in C2 (at the 2010 under 23 European Championships he finished fourth with Tom Brady), was at the top of his list and the first athlete Stott got back in a boat with since his injury.

A few test sessions made it seem like they were a good match technically and so the pair started to discuss more in-depth aspects of forming a crew.

The pair have since trained together on several occasions in the last few weeks and decided this week they would team up officially.

“My partner needed to be a right-handed paddler because I'm a left-hander,” said Stott.

“Mark’s dedication and his quality as an athlete is obvious and well known. He was top of my list in terms of a person who I would be able to form a good partnership with.

“We have also been friends for a long time, we've shared rooms together on World Cups and training camps and we have a similar sense of humour, so we get along well both in and out of the boat.”

Proctor has suffered his own share of bad luck this year having missed selection for the GB Senior team in March.  But he did race C1 at the recent Prague World Cup and, given the reduction in his own training levels, he did well and finished tenth. The competitive spark was evident, as is his determination to make the partnership with Stott succeed.

“For me it's come at the right time in my career, and it's given me the best pick me up I could have ever wanted after missing selections this year,” said 25 year old Proctor, who is likely to keep racing C1 going alongside C2.

“I’ve got my drive back and it’s helped me wake up in the morning and spend every minute of the day think about training.

“Now I’m the guy getting in the boat with the Olympic Champion, which is really exciting.  We've not got much time for Rio so it's full steam ahead.  There's no time to rest.”

In starting their campaign for the 2016 Olympic Games now the pair are two years behind other GB crews which include World Champions David Florence and Richard Hounslow.

They are under no illusions that qualifying for the single C2 berth for the Rio Games will be simple.

But more unlikely things have happened.  The highly-charged Stott is a man who likes the challenge to prove the impossible and he qualified for the London Games after a serious injury to his other shoulder.

“The Rio Games is our clear and obvious goal,” said Stott.  “But having declared that as our aim the important thing for us now is to set that aside, focus completely on ourselves and the process of extracting every bit of goodness that we can from everything we do in the next 18 months to two years.

“We have got such a short time and such an amazing quality of athletes to battle against, so it's going to be a major challenge and everything is stacked against us.

“But our ability and racing results will come about through a serious focus on process and developing ourselves as a team.

“And if we focus exclusively on the journey aspect then the other things will take care of themselves.”

Later this summer Stott will move from Nottingham to join Proctor at Lee Valley White Water Centre, the London Games slalom venue considered to be the world’s best.

Lee Valley is home to GB Canoeing’s senior slalom team and the venue for the 2015 World Championships which marks the start of Britain’s selection process for the Rio Games.

“We have an awesome training venue at Lee Valley and an awesome squad of driven athletes,” said Stott.

“It's about taking maximum advantage from that environment.  You couldn't wish for anything better in a training environment than Lee Valley as we start our campaign for Rio.”