To the Tune of a Different Drummer
Two Trips to the Top eBook created by daveyhearn.com with the permission of author William T. Endicott To The Tune Of A Different Drummer "Yes, there may be rules…but you want to learn how to short-cut the rules." -- Oliver Fix Introduction This is a study of Oliver Fix, who was World Champion in men’s kayak in 1995 and Olympic Champion in 1996. He is one of only two men to do this, the other being Siegbert Horn of East Germany, who won the Worlds and Olympics in ‘71 and’72, respectively. Since I did "case studies" on earlier canoeing and kayaking champions (see my books, The Ultimate Run for slalom; The Danger Zone for wildwater and The Barton Mold for sprint), I thought it would be useful to do one on Oliver, for comparative purposes. The first thing that pops out about the career of Oliver Fix is how many advantages he had. In many ways, he is the prime example of "what it’s supposed to look like," the top athlete coming out of the traditional "pyramid" structure with plenty of racers, coaches and training facilities. Oliver had the advantage not only of growing up in Germany, which has one of the biggest, most organized programs in the sport, he also grew up in Augsburg, probably the most famous training and racing center in the sport. On top of that, he studied sports in school and even did a year of medical school; he started kayaking extremely young; he trained in swimming and kayaking at the same time for 5 years, which must have gotten him into fantastic upper body shape; he had coaches for his whole career, including one, Helmut Handschuh, who spent almost every workout with him; he got paid to train full- time for 3 years when he was in the Army; and living in Europe, he had exposure to plenty of international competition.
[Show full text]