'Everything is better when I get to do it with Jake': Meet the husband and wife aiming to qualify for the LA Olympics
Jake and Genie Cochrane at Rathlin Island. Pic: Jake Cochrane
Jake and Georgina Cochrane were strolling through downtown Oklahoma City a few weeks ago when their competitive natures kicked in. They might be husband and wife but all’s fair in love, war and through 18 holes of cascading waterfalls and brick obstacles.
Georgina, better known as Genie, is quick to counter her other half’s claim that he let her have a five or six-shot lead before reaching for fifth gear with the fact that she signed for a couple of hole-in-ones on the way around.
“We drew,” she laughs looking back, “which was probably best for our marriage because if one of us had won it probably would have gone south for a while.”
The setting aside, this wasn’t anything unusual. The Cochranes are both international canoeists who were in the States representing Ireland at the World Slalom Championships. The goal is that they’ll do the same come the LA Olympics.
There isn’t any shortage of family ties in Irish Olympic sports.
Kate O’Connor’s coach is her dad Michael. The O’Rourke sisters, Aoife and Lisa, are both world champions. Daniel Wiffen’s twin brother Nathan has made World and European finals over the same distances and is another targeting 2028.
But when it comes to people romantically entwined? Well, that’s less common. although rugby player Cliodhna Moloney does play for Exeter City with her wife Claudia MacDonald, and against her when Ireland have faced England.
Canoeing has a few similar stories: among them the Polish pair of 2024 Olympic silver K1 kayak medallist Klaudia Zwolińska and her fiancé Grzegorz Hedwig who has competed at the last three Games but isn’t currently making the national squad.
So, as far as we know, there isn’t another married couple on the international canoeing circuit as of now where both are competing at the same elite level and for the same country. The obvious question then: what’s it like?
The benefits are obvious. Both know exactly what the demands of elite sport, and this elite sport, involve. And there is an ability to plug into the other’s mindset, or to give a hint or tip when it might be needed.
“That can be an interesting crossover sometimes,” says Jake, “knowing boundaries and advice.”
That competitive streak is always there, not least when it comes to straight line sprints in practise. A melding of minds in other areas, like nutrition and recovery, is balanced nicely by contrasting approaches to what they do on the water.
Genie: “We are different in the way we approach training and racing, which is actually really nice. Jake is a very instinctual paddler. He won’t overplan anything. He is very confident in his approach and ability. I am much more of a plan everything type.”
Jake: “Yeah, you like to watch what everyone else is doing on the course and then be like, ‘okay, I have a really good idea of that’. Like Genie says, I am more instinctive and go with what I think is going to work.”
Genie: “I really love seeing that trust that Jake has in himself. Then when I see him execute it so well I feel like it pushes me to be a bit more like, ‘what if I did trust myself a bit more? I think that has made me a much better paddler.”
They first met in Prague all of seven years ago when she was still Genie Collin and representing her native Australia. It was her team’s Galway-born physio who introduced her to someone she described as a ‘nice Irishman’.
Jake jokes that she doesn’t remember that encounter. Genie says otherwise. It was a few years later, when both had moved to Pau in France for their sport, that they became closer through shared training sessions and post-workout coffees.
Love finally blossomed when Genie returned from a two-month stint at home in Oz. They were actually eating ice creams and sitting on a hill overlooking Prague, where she had lived for a time, when the penny dropped.
“I can remember thinking,” she laughs, “‘I don’t think this is platonic anymore’.”
Marriage is a massive commitment, so is changing nationality.
Genie had reached a point where she was pondering retirement. Her parents had helped fund her dreams but it was costing over €4,000 just to go home for selections trials every year and she wanted to start standing on her own two feet.
They talked it through, joking about how they were getting a bit old to keep on being “kayaking bums”. There was talk of moves to London or Jake’s previous base in Nottingham before they decided on Belfast where his family was based.
Genie’s switch to Ireland meant a one-year period where she had to sit out international competition. She studied Pilates and started giving classes, used her physio qualifications and had Jake’s family as support, but it wasn’t easy.
Canoeing kept him on the road. They did the stats after their first year of marriage and realised they had spent over 170 days apart. It’s easier now that they are both in green and travelling the world together chasing that same Californian dream.
Jake is hoping LA proves to be third time lucky after missing out on an outside shot at Tokyo in 2021 and losing out to an internal Ireland team race-off for Paris two years ago. Genie is dreaming of the Games in a way that she hadn’t done since she was a kid.
He is hoping to claim a quota place for Ireland in the first phase of qualifiers that started at those Worlds in Oklahoma towards the end of July. She is zeroing in on a quota in the second and third qualifying phases closer to the Games in 2028.
It’s not going to be easy, but they’re embracing the journey together.
“I just feel everything is better when I get to do it with Jake. I’ve done World Cups before and it is better to do it with Jake. Watching Jake get so close for Paris, the way it felt even thinking about watching him at the Olympics… to be able to do it with him would be huge.”
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