Bellingham’s Jonas Ecker and Aaron Small of Seattle finished eighth in the Men’s Kayak Double 500-meter race, outperforming expectations in reaching the medal round in their first Olympics at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in Paris Aug. 9.
Ecker and Small finished with a time of 1 minute, 30.02 seconds, less than a second behind the seventh-place boat of Jakub Spicar and Daniel Havel of the Czech Republic, who posted a time of 1:29.29.
Germans Jacob Schopf and Max Lemke won gold in a time of 1:26.87, just a blink of an eye off the Olympic record of 1:26.85, set earlier Friday in the semifinal heat by eventual bronze medalists Jean van der Westhuyzen and Tom Green of Australia. Nadas Bence and Sandor Totka of Hungary, the world recordholders at 500 meters (1:26.50, set in 2017), took silver with a time of 1:27.15. Van der Westhuyzen and Green won bronze in 1:27.29.
It was the first time in 24 years that a U.S. men’s kayak double raced in an Olympic final, according to the American Canoe Association, the national governing body for paddlesports.
“Getting this result is very motivating,” Ecker said by phone from Paris soon after the race. “This is the most competitive field you can get in canoe sprinting … it’s more than we could have dreamed or ever asked for.”
Racing in lane one, Ecker and Small kept pace in a blisteringly fast field on a relatively calm day but could not gain ground on the leaders from the start. Just one second separated the first through sixth boats. The U.S. pair was seventh at the 250-meter mark, 2.59 seconds off the lead, and dropped to eighth soon after.
Still, just making it to the final eight and racing for an Olympic medal was a sparkling Games debut for Ecker, 21, and Small, 23, the youngest team in the event, with promise for the future.
The last U.S. medal in Olympic kayak was won by Greg Barton in 1992, one of four won by Barton, including two Olympic golds in 1988. Barton, who lives just a couple miles from Ecker and Small in Seattle, has helped coach them for years.
Two hours earlier Friday, Ecker and Small made the eight-team medal round in dramatic fashion, squeaking into the final by a boat tip in the semifinal and defeating two big names in the process.
Their fourth-place finish in 1:29.51 was just 15 hundredths of a second faster than Hungary’s Balint Kopasz and Adam Varga in fifth, which translates to about one foot of boat length. Kopasz is the reigning Olympic champion in the Men’s Kayak Single 1,000-meter event and the world recordholder at that distance. Varga is the reigning Olympic silver medalist. Racing in lane 1, the U.S. pair surged from near last in the field to fourth, the final qualifying spot, after the midway point and held on.
Since there’s no actual finish line in the water, racers hear an electronic tone when they pass over the line. Ecker heard three tones close together and matched them to the boats that finished ahead. The U.S. and Hungary boats were so close Ecker could not tell if the fourth tone matched the U.S. finish or not. Only four boats would make the medal final. So they waited for the visual indicator, a blue light that lit their lane on a screen.
“It felt like forever, but it was, like, 30 seconds,” he said. Then, it finally popped up. They were in the final.
In introductions before the final, the TV commentator working the live feed acknowledged the pair’s — and the U.S. team’s — breakthrough on the Olympic stage as relative newcomers to the world of international senior-division finals. Introducing them among the field of Olympic medalists and record-holders, the announcer said: “From up there in rugged Washington state, Jonas Ecker and Aaron Small are looking to be founding fathers, in a sense, of the kayak and canoe sprints here in the Olympic Games from the States.”
There appeared to be no weeds slowing any boats, as Ecker experienced two days before in what was expected to be his stronger event, the 1,000-meter individual race, where he did not advance past the quarterfinal. Ecker won the under-23 world title at that distance last month.
Ecker’s father, Brian, is Ecker’s main coach and the chief operating officer for Bellingham’s Family Care Network. He and Jonas’ mother, E’Lana, a speech language pathologist and pediatric swallowing specialist, were in Paris, along with several of Jonas’s friends from Sehome days. Ecker plans to travel in Europe with friends before returning to Bellingham for a visit, and then finishing a UW program, based at Friday Harbor.
But after an intense two years spent in pursuit of an Olympic berth, it won’t be long until he returns to the water for another go — this time, the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
U.S. hopes in canoe kayak events are looking up. Evy Leibfarth, 20, of Bryson City, North Carolina, won bronze in the Women’s Canoe Slalom, the first women’s slalom medal in Olympic canoe or kayak in 20 years, according to the ACA. Seattle’s Nevin Harrison, 22, is the defending Olympic champion in the 200-meter canoe sprint and will race again Saturday, August 10. For the first time in their careers, Ecker and Small had consecutive races under 1:30 in the Olympic quarterfinal and semifinal.
Earlier this summer, Barton said it would take a good race for Ecker and Small to make the eight-boat final. At this early stage in their Olympic careers, he said, an Olympic medal would require “the race of their lives.”
Ecker, a 2021 Sehome graduate and University of Washington marine biology major, grew up in Bellingham and is a founding member of the Bellingham Canoe and Kayak Sprint Team, where he learned to paddle and race. Seattle’s Small, who is hearing impaired and uses hearing aids, graduated from UW in June.
Paddling to the start of the Olympic final Friday, the two engaged in a simultaneous sign-language routine in what has become a pre-race ritual to signal to the hearing impaired community and to remind themselves to have fun. On Friday, it was also to acknowledge the end of a journey. What starts like a crossed-fingers sign for hoped-for good luck winds up as sign language for “Ready, spaghetti?” It has taken on a life of its own, Ecker said, appearing on social media during the games.
When it was over, Ecker marveled at the long route he and Small took that, somehow, got them from Seattle and Bellingham to the start of their last race in Paris. The pair failed to qualify for the Olympics at the world championships in 2022 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but were close enough to seriously consider a run for the slot. They then used an Americas Continental qualifier in April to secure a spot by winning in their last possible race last April in Sarasota, Florida. Then, at the Olympics, they never qualified directly to semifinals, instead having to race each heat and quarterfinal to get to the promised land — the start line of an Olympic medal round. No medal — this time, anyway.
“We took the hard way to get there,” Ecker said. “That in itself is an accomplishment in my book.”
