Bronze medal-winning canoe sprinter Jon Schofield has said he and his partner Liam Heath face a challenge to improve on their performance at London 2012.
The pair will compete in the heats of the K2 200m tomorrow, with the semi-finals on the same day before Thursday’s final.
Schofield, 31, said: “The competition is much tougher than it was in London. All around the world the crews have upped their standard — a few new crews have come along and we’ve seen it get harder and harder the last few years.
“But we have an Olympic medal already and there’s one thing we want to do, which is improve the colour.” The pair suffered a scare in qualifying after a false start: “We raced all the way to the finish line and then we got a call saying there’d been a false start and we’d have to redo the race. We’d obviously qualified in our minds but then 45 minutes later everybody had to go back to the start and do it again.
“That was extremely testing, particularly given the false start was given to us. But we finished fifth again and it was an interesting test for us.”
Schofield revealed he has a way to combat any concerns about the quality of the water at Rio — by drinking Coca-Cola: “It’s really good at killing stuff in your mouth. If you fall into the water, just drink some and swill it round your mouth — it’s very acidic.
“The coaches recommend it because the acidity kills the bacteria.”
Heath, 31, added: “The training seems to be working, we’re really excited to get back out into the Olympic environment and see what we can do.”
