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BEIJING — Who knows why it happened? Not Thomas Hall — at least, not to the point where he's comfortable enough being open about it.
All he can say is that at some point in the new year, he felt what he described as being "a sea change in my life … a good thing … something that made me more comfortable with myself."
On the day that Adam van Koeverden proved himself to be human after all, it fell to a 26-year-old paddler from Pointe-Claire, Que., to put Canada on the podium with a bronze medal at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park in the C-1 1,000 metres canoe race.
Paddling a strong strategic race that he took great delight in forecasting on a blog he's doing from here, Hall tagged along with Vadim Menkov of Uzbekistan for most of the race before pulling ahead with a little more than 100 metres remaining.
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"Around 350 [metres], I felt I was still fourth, and the whole thing I tell myself every time is go harder," Hall said. "Those are my key words. I felt I could reel the Uzbeki guy in around 100 metres. I knew with about 100 metres left, I had him. I've raced against him before, and I know the strategy he uses. He used the same here."
Hall finished with a time of 3 minutes 53.653 seconds, behind gold medalist Attila Vajda of Hungary (3:50.467) and silver medalist David Cal of Spain (3:52.751).
It was an emotional first medal for the Hungarians, who were left reeling when teammate Gyorgy Kolonics died of a heart attack in July while training on the water in Budapest.
The Hungarians are wearing green ribbons around their arms in memory of Kolonics, and Vajda said: "We know he is with us. He is in heaven, but we know he's holding our hands."
Hall's medal was the highlight of an otherwise humdrum day for the Canadians. The men's K-4 1,000 metres team of Brady Reardon, Angus Mortimer, Chris Pellini and Rhys Hill was last in the final, while the C-2 1,000 metres men's team of Andrew Russell and Gabriel Beauchesne-Sévigny placed seventh.
Hall's coach, Michael Creamer, says that what his paddler lacks in physical stature, he more than makes up for by his fitness level.
"We knew he'd have to pull something off in the last 200 metres," Creamer said. "He got off to the line in the first 100 pretty good, but usually you see the bigger guys pull ahead a little up to 250. That's what happens, so I tell him, 'Make your real good move at the 500 metres.'"
Menkov led for half of the race, but slipped to third by the 750-metre mark.
Hall's performance put smiles on the faces of people such as Graham Barton, the sprint high-performance director of CanoeKayak Canada, on a day when there was precious little of the commodity.
"Thomas has been a competitor all year," Barton said. "He was sitting nicely beside Menkov for most of the race, and I think when the two others slipped by Menkov, it broke his spirit a bit."
Hall put himself in position to be considered a medal contender with a breakout season, scoring two World Cup wins, including one over three-time Olympic gold medalist Andreas Dittmer of Germany. A former world junior champion, Hall stepped out of the shadow of Mark Oldershaw in C-1.
"Pretty wild, man," Hall said later, twisting the medal around his neck. "I knew I could do it, but I never knew it would happen. I believed in myself, but then that's something that everybody in this level does."
Despite the public forecasting of his strategy on his blog, Hall admitted that the Uzbekistani paddler he was shadowing showed him a slightly different look, even though the overall strategy was the same.
"In the past, I'd catch him at 500 or 600 metres, but now it's closer to 800," Hall said.
