Marcus Cooper: ‘I like it when I do something superhuman’ | Paris 2024 Olympics

Marcus Cooper Waltz will be the flag bearer for Spain at the opening ceremony of the Paris Games next Friday. Born in Oxford in 1994 and raised in Mallorca, this nervous and optimistic boy has found his second home in the kayak. After winning gold in the individual race at Rio 2016, he was the driving force behind the K-4, the four-seater kayak that won silver at Tokyo 2021…

Marcus Cooper Waltz will be the flag bearer for Spain at the opening ceremony of the Paris Games next Friday. Born in Oxford in 1994 and raised in Mallorca, this nervous and optimistic boy has found his second home in the kayak. After winning gold in the individual at Rio 2016, at Tokyo 2021 he was the driving force behind the K4, a four-crew kayak that won silver in the 500m sprint and now leads the flotilla that Spain is sending to the Paris Games, which will take place from July 27 to August 10 in 16 canoeing events at the Vers-sur-Marne Sea Stadium. After leading the medal count with Germany at last year’s World Championships, the Spanish can be considered a force to be reckoned with. Padel tennis is certainly a mine from which the delegation is looking to mine more prizes.

Ask. Why did Spain become the country with the greatest success in canoeing?

Reply. We do a good job: the canoeists, the technicians, the medical staff and the federation. It revolves around the fact that the best results those of us at the top achieve, the young people have no other goal than to match them. When they start competing internationally, in the junior categories, the goal of the guys is to be on the podium. Yes or yes. He trains every day with this mindset. One of our advantages over other countries is that we are concentrated in high-performance centers all year round, starting with the juniors. This, together with the climate and the food, helps Spain a lot.

TO. Is climate a determining factor?

R. Canoeing is a summer sport. Canoeists from northern Europe travel to Spain to train because their marshes freeze in winter.

TO. Do you think food is a strategic advantage?

R. Yes, we are what we eat. It is our fuel. And in Spain, we eat well. It is a cultural sign that carries over into our sport and makes us better than other countries where athletes eat just to fill a hole in their stomach. It is a precision sport, like Formula 1. On a day when you do not eat well, you notice a drop in glucose. It is as if your battery suddenly runs out. This is typical of the bird. You feel very hungry because you do not have enough energy to convert into kilocalories, and it comes mainly from carbohydrates.

TO. Is energy efficiency the key to maintaining lactic acid after one minute of maximal effort?

R. In the last 100 meters of 500, your lactate levels are through the roof. Olympic sprinting is a completely lactic acid sport. It’s killer. You feel it in your whole body, in every muscle. It’s one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had in my life. You live with it and you train for it every day with lactic acid tolerance exercises. We take supplements that are inhibitors because they slow down the production of lactic acid, and we try to live with it. So that even if the leader hits you, you can keep shoveling with the right technique. Even if you can’t increase your speed, let it decrease as little as possible.

TO. How does the body cope with the degradation of technology due to fatigue?

R. The legs and arms get tired because they have to make extra efforts in relation to the torso and waist area. The arms have a large technical range: the force is transferred from the hand to the footrest where we push, and the torso moves thanks to the inertia of the legs. If the limbs get tired, the torso rotates worse because you have less ability to transfer the leverage from the paddle in the water to the canoe on the footrest. The legs do not have to be as strong, but they should be strong.

TO. Spain is probably the best country in the world for team sports. Is canoeing a team sport?

R. The four best rowers in the world are not necessarily the best in K-4. There is nothing individual about this discipline. K-4 is not only a sport of strength, endurance and efficiency. Synchronization with the rest of your colleagues is very important. It is like in football: to move the ball from goal to goal and score, you need synchronization. If the four best rowers in the world push like animals without further ado, it is not enough. The trick is that all four push exactly the same way. The kicking of the legs, the rotation of the hips, the arms and the oars in the water must move simultaneously. It is like pushing a wall between four. The wall can only move if all four of them touch. If you push two seconds later, the wall will fall on you.

TO. How is synchronization achieved?

R. This is what you don’t see. You feel it when you paddle and it feels like the kayak is floating above the water, light, like it’s flying, without the drag of fluid resistance. You notice it visibly in the movement of your legs and hips. You think it’s a matter of weapons and nothing could be further from the truth. Inside the canoe, it’s very important that the hips move forward and back; we do a lot of synchronization work below the waist. Because we don’t synchronize our legs, we get much more tired, and a canoeist with tired legs is deadly, useless. If you still have strength and endurance, even better, but the main thing is coordination. There are countries that lift much more kilograms in the gym than we do. They are beasts. You see the Lithuanians, they seem twice as big as us, and their K-4 floats differently than ours. Putting in watts does not mean they are being used effectively. This is a cause for concern in daily training. You have to have muscle mass, but the muscle has to be efficient. Muscle weight should never upset the balance of strength, endurance and power. We are not going to go faster because we are “excited”. I have been training since I was 12 and if I wanted, I could be a bodybuilder. I am not, because that is not what is interesting. The bigger the muscle, the more it consumes and the more tired it gets. It is a sport of infinite details.

TO. Many athletes experience a moment of spiritual enlightenment. Do you canoe because you are looking for the ultimate pleasure or do you simply love to compete and win?

R. I like it when I know I’m doing something superhuman. Not because no one can do it, but because the average person doesn’t want to do it. Most people don’t want to do what I do. I know I’m pushing my body and mind to the limit. I really like improving: seeing where I can go. My way of staying motivated after winning Olympic gold is to challenge myself to greater and greater challenges. So after winning gold in Rio in K1, I entered K4, which is much more difficult. Now in Paris, my goal is to compete in two competitions: K4 and K2. Even if the difference between one final and the other is only half an hour. I want to break two 500s in half an hour, which no one does at the highest level.

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