How to be fast and win medals with Olympic coach Ekaitz Saies

About this episode

Ekaitz Saies discusses his role as the Performance Director for Paddle UK and the challenges facing Britain's sprint kayak racing programme.

2024 brought some of the highest highs and lowest lows for Britain’s international sprint kayak racing programme. The high: it was Team GB’s most successful Paralympics ever with a record 8 medals. The low: for the first time ever, not a single GB athlete qualified to race canoe sprint at the Paris Olympics. So in January 2025, Paddle UK brought on Ekaitz Saies. Ekaitz raced internationally for Spain for 15 years, won world titles in 2009 and 2011, earned a PhD in Sport Psychology, and coached Spanish Olympic athletes to unprecedented success before moving to the UK. In August, he officially stepped into his new role as Paddle UK Performance Director for Paracanoe and Canoe Sprint. In other words: he’s the person in charge of making sure GB is well represented in Los Angeles in 2028. There’s a lot of pressure on Ekaitz to turn things around for non-para sprint in the UK, but with his background in sport psychology and culture-first approach to performance, he seems well-equipped to rise to the challenge. When he first started at Paddle UK, the cultural differences (paddling culture – going from paella to beans on toast is a whole other thing) were the first thing that stood out…

People in this episode

Hosts: Billy, Betsy

Guest: Ekaitz Saies

Topics covered

• Olympic coaching
• sprint kayaking
• Paralympics
• sport psychology
• performance culture

Keywords

• Team GB
• Paracanoe
• Canoe Sprint
• Los Angeles 2028

Mentioned in this episode

Products: K4

Books & works: The Champions Mindset, olympics

Places: Britain, GB, Spain, UK, Los Angeles, LA, Canada, Europe

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