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At the first Olympic opening ceremony he attends, Adam van Koeverden will be carrying Canada's flag.
The 26-year-old Olympic and world champion kayaker from Oakville, Ont., will lead a squad of 331 Canadian athletes into the Summer Games at the Aug. 8 opening at Beijing's monumental National Stadium — dubbed the Bird's Nest for its innovative architecture.
"I don't feel it's so much I'm leading as representing my country," said van Koeverden, who came out of the Athens Games in 2004 with gold and bronze medals. "But in terms of helping me with the competition, it's helping me with the biggest races of my career. Walking into a stadium of 75,000 screaming fans is great."
Adam van Koeverden of Oakville, Ont., celebrates after winning the K1 500m final at the canoe world championship in Duisburg, Germany, in 2007. (Frank Augstein/The Associated Press)
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Van Koeverden won't compete until the 10th day of the Beijing Games.
At Athens, van Koeverden did not march in the athletes procession and recalls watching the festivities on television in the basement of a chateau in France, where the team was training. He said he questioned a coach: "Why aren't we there?"
"Don't worry. You'll carry the flag in the closing ceremony," he recited the coach's prophetic words yesterday after a news conference in Toronto.
"He thrives on working hard," Scott Oldershaw, van Koeverden's coach, said in a CBC interview. "He tolerates a lot of pain and discomfort. He knows the races are going to hurt him." Van Koeverden, whose Athens exploits won him the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada's top athlete in 2004, returns to the Olympic lanes as one of Canada's top medal hopes in Beijing.
Viability as a medal winner was one consideration for the Canadian Olympic Committee's selection, as was leadership. But while athletics is important, it boosted van Koeverden's stock that he's been a defender of the Olympics as a place where athletes deserve to be at the forefront, not the politicians.
"I don't think my going to China to race my kayak is the same as signing up to be a member of their parliament," he said in an interview after a training session in the spring.
On that day, he took direct aim at comments made at a human-rights demonstration by Olympic figure-skating silver medalist Elvis Stojko, who said athletes should "think twice" about going to a country with China's human-rights record.
The idea of staying away didn't sit well with van Koeverden, who won his gold in the 500-metre sprint and his bronze in the 1,000. The wreckage wrought by a political boycott was too close to home to dismiss.
His coach, Oldershaw, was to compete in 1980 in the four-man boat with brothers Dean and Reed Oldershaw and Alwyn Morris, but the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was killed by a boycott of the Moscow Games.
"If these were [Stojko's] Olympic Games, I think he'd have moderated those comments a little," van Koeverden said.
Canada's Olympic athletes are not expected to initiate propagandistic political statements at the Olympic Games or venues, but they're free to respond to questions, the COC says.
The kayaker remains prepared to face all challengers over the issue of sports versus politics, including those who slammed him as "self-serving" for his Internet blogs on the issue.
"Why is it that boycotting an Olympic Games is considered to be an appropriate sacrificial lamb for the advancement of a political agenda, when foreign trade, diplomatic relations, cultural exchanges and tourism are rarely put on the chopping block?" he wrote.
A multiple Canadian champion with 21 World Cup gold medals, five this year alone, van Koeverden is Canada's second two-time flag-bearer.
Speed skater Catriona Le May Doan also carried it twice, at the end of the Nagano Olympics in 1998 and at the start of the Salt Lake Games in 2002.
Van Koeverden was one of three Canadians to bring home gold from the Athens Olympics in 2004. Gymnast Kyle Shewfelt and cyclist Lori-Ann Meunzer were not candidates for Beijing.
Shewfelt opted out because his gymnastics competition will open the day after the opening ceremony. He's been mounting a remarkable comeback after suffering two leg fractures.
Meunzer, already in her late 30s when she rode to victory at Athens, has retired.
Also high on the list for 2008 flag-bearer consideration were diver Alexandre Despatie, a silver medalist at Athens, and 61-year-old equestrian show jumper Ian Millar, who was selected to his ninth Olympic team.
The 331 Canadian athletes going to China represent a significant increase from the 265 who went to Athens.
The growth is due in part to an increase in team sports that qualified for these Games. In 2004, Canada qualified its men's baseball, men's water polo and women's softball squads. This summer, those same three are joined by men's field hockey and women's soccer.
Nine athletes who reached the podium in Athens are back, the COC said in a statement: van Koeverden in kayak, Shewfelt in gymnastics, diver Despatie, mountain biker Marie-Hélène Prémont, trampoline athlete Karen Cockburn, wrestler Tonya Verbeek, rower Jake Wetzel and divers Émilie Heymans and Blythe Hartley.
The 2008 Canadian Olympic team also boasts several athletes with four or more Olympic Games to their name. This list is led by Millar and rower Lesley Thompson-Willie (sixth Olympic Games). Edmonton native trap shooter Susan Nattrass will also compete in her sixth Olympic Games, dating back to 1976.
