Pau Echaniz sometimes has to be asked by his father to make his bed. The son, in the unruly mood of a 23-year-old, resists just to annoy him. The brilliant bronze medallist in the K-1 slalom on the Vaires-sur-Marne canal has two faces: an artistic spirit and a shark’s soul on the canal. The two merged on Thursday east of Paris to achieve a third place that was difficult to predict if one looks at the times of the semi-final. The Basque, number 30 in the ranking world championship, he finished with the worst time of the 12 finalists and finished on the podium. And one fingernail away from gold.
Pau is the son of Xabi Echaniz, an Olympian in Barcelona 92 and Atlanta 96, and coach and partner of Maialen Chourraut, the three-time Olympic medallist. Since 2021, in addition to reminding him of the most basic household chores, Xabi has also been directing his son. This Thursday, as soon as the medal was confirmed, he began clapping his hands with his surfer-style blonde hair.
“I went like a wild horse, very loose, very sure. I knew what I was doing at all times and it worked out. It’s a dream I’ve had for a long time. You don’t know how much I’ve thought about this descent,” explained an elated Pau. At the finish he clocked a time of 88.87 seconds after hitting the 19th gate (of the 23 on the course) with his right shoulder, which gave him a two-second penalty. Without that infraction he would have been in the golden time because the champion, the Italian Giovanni de Gennaro, only used 65 tenths less. Echaniz was the only one of the three members of the podium who held on to the top positions with a hit obstacle. That’s how good his descent through whirlpools and currents was, sliding the kayak. The silver medal went to the Frenchman Titouan Castryck.
“I have sewn an almost perfect sleeve, except for that touch,” said the young man, winking at his other life, his other side: the artistic one, the cartoonist. From eight to two in the afternoon, he studies Fashion and Pattern Making in San Sebastian. He has already created a brand, Ranger Universal, and has confessed that he takes his sewing machine on some canoeing trips.
The son of a paddler and watching his father train Maialen Chourraut every day, Pau Echaniz’s life is one of those predestined for whitewater. Nobody forced him, but everything pushed him into a canoe. From the age of one until he was 19 he lived in La Seu d’Urgell, the town in Lleida that has a canal, but some time ago he left for San Sebastian. His father and Maialen Chourraut went there, and he followed them after a few months. The icy water of La Seu and its cold winters were also hard on him. Now, in the Basque Country, he trains on the Urumea River, about eight kilometres from home, on the San Miguel, in the sea and also on the French canal in Pau, an hour and a half away. It depends on the day, the work plan and the weather conditions.
He can’t practice much with Chourraut, because she does it while he goes to class, but his father does everything possible to bring them together so that they challenge each other. They are not very similar when it comes to gliding through the water either: she is a tireless machine that needs to be unplugged, while he is a shark that also has his moments of disconnection when he needs to be stung. “He is very brave in the water, he has an impressive ability. I am more of an ant, learning and insisting every day,” Chourraut said a few days ago in an interview with this newspaper.
He had never achieved such a high position in a senior competition. A great success. This was his first golden moment in an Olympic event, but he had already participated in others from the kitchen. In the preparation for Rio 2016, Xabi used Pau to spur Maialen on in some very hard lactic tolerance sessions in the river in the full July sun. A few weeks later, she ended up taking the gold. And in Tokyo he was what is known in the world as an opener, those who demonstrate the route before the qualifiers begin to compete. He was chosen as one of the best juniors of the previous year.
In the days leading up to his Paris debut, Pau Echaniz admitted that three years ago he was not the favourite to be among the participants. “Year after year, I have improved a lot with the help of my father,” he said. The federation’s technicians believed that he could do anything, even crash, but what they were sure of was that he would not be scared or overcome by pressure. And so it happened. He entered the final with a clean slate and put together a fire-breathing run, like a wild bull, to grab a piece of Olympic glory. And as of this Friday, he also competes in kayak cross.
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