'It can be cruel, you have to have a thick skin in this sport'

Noel Hendrick. 

July isn’t even done but the races for Sam and Liam are. Euro 2022 is in the closing strait, the World Cup has been transplanted to winter in the desert and it’ll be November before rugby dominates the back pages again. All but one of golf’s nine majors have come and gone. Add to that the men’s Tour de France and Wimbledon.

So what now of the sporting summer?

If the biggest festivals have all but packed up their tents then there are still bijou offerings out there. There are three dozen Irish kids at the European Youth Olympics in Slovakia; eleven Team Ireland Olympians representing Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games and a multi-sport European Championships around the corner in Munich.

That’s just a sample.

In Augsburg, Germany, Noel Hendrick is part of an Irish team competing at the World Canoe Slalom Championships this week, an event that drops one year on from the last Olympic Games and 24 months out from the next. His eyes are fixed on the road ahead but a look over the shoulder is merited.

The Kildare man didn’t make the delayed Games last summer. He came up one agonising nation place short of booking his ticket to Japan alongside Liam Jegou with a superb performance at the European Championships in Italy, but not all disappointments come wrapped in the same packaging.

“Missing out on Tokyo was a very strange feeling,” he said ahead of the Worlds. “It was pretty difficult at the time but even afterwards I was super proud of the performance that I put in. I remember realising I had been up against it.

“I was one of the lowest-ranked guys out of the five or six people that were genuinely in contention. So, to do what I did and hold the first position right up until the last go, I remember being really proud of that. That helped me get through that period: to know that I had no regrets and very little I would change about it.” Hendrick seems to possess a keen sense of balance off the water as well as on it. His Instagram account isn’t all about the boat. There are posts from a bare-footed expedition up Croagh Patrick, a music festival and a ski slope: evidence of a desire to enjoy the journey even as he paddles furiously towards the ultimate destination.

“You wouldn’t be in this sport for the money anyway. I have a degree in software engineering so I could chase the money if I wanted. The sport and the lifestyle has been very good to me and if I can make ends meet doing this then… “I’ve seen a lot of the world, parts of the world that I wouldn’t if I didn’t paddle. I’ve got to do a lot of things and meet a lot of people that I wouldn’t have otherwise. There are a lot of hard days in this sport, you’re on the road a lot, but that sort of thing makes it a lot easier.” So does the money that has come his way via the Olympic Federation of Ireland’s solidarity fund and FBD’s ‘Make A Difference’ initiative. He isn’t on Sport Ireland’s carding scheme so that sort of help helps pay the rent. Literally.

Hendrick, whose twin brother Robert is another member of Canoeing Ireland’s elite squad, took some time off after his Tokyo bid to take stock. To go further required a trade-off. Consistency has been sacrificed for more speed.

That means taking more risks in a sport already awash with them.

The margins are tiny and just making it to a Games is hard enough. Eighteen nation places will be up for grabs at next year’s Worlds in London. Fail to secure one of those slots and it is a scramble for the one other ticket on the table at the Europeans.

“I sometimes struggle to think of a sport that is similar to it,” said Hendrick whose introduction to canoeing was his dad Pat’s spins on the Liffey Descent. “It can often be quite cruel. You have to have a thick skin to be in this sport.

“There is only one paddler in history who has a better win ratio than loss ratio so you’ve got to be willing to accept that you are fighting the tide. You have to understand that there will be more bad days than good days.”