Nevin Harrison’s dreams came true in Tokyo when she won the inaugural Olympic women’s canoe sprint 200 at age 19.
Much of what followed the American’s gold-medal moment has seemed more like a nightmare.
The Seattle native fought through chronic lower back pain that made it hard for her to get out of bed at times last summer. She has dealt with a hamstring injury and had issues with her previous coach. As her results fell short of boosted expectations, she said some questioned if she would be a one-hit wonder.
“Once you have a big accomplishment like that, it becomes everybody’s business instead of just yours,” she said.
She said a sports psychologist helped her, and now she’s back and ready to go for the Paris Olympics with a new coach in Joseph Harper. She said she wants to do this right.
“There was no other person that was going to get me to where I wanted to be,” said Harrison, now 22. “And if I continued in that negative headspace and really was just a complete mess, that I wasn’t going to reach my goals. And then I was going to kind of waste all this time chasing after something that I was blowing for myself.”
Doing it right, she believes, includes making another run at gold. She wants to do it all again, with the benefit of the wisdom she’s gained in the past three years.
“I think a good motivator is knowing the feeling of how it feels to win a gold,” she said. “It’s not like, ‘It would be so amazing to do that.’ It’s like, I know exactly how that felt, and that’s exactly how I want to feel again. So it’s kind of like knowing the feeling that I’m searching for, which is helpful.”
Harrison said the lead-up to this Olympics is much different. She said there is more pressure this time, but she’s learned to embrace the attention.
Harper said Harrison became a victim of her success. She knocked off Canada’s Laurence Vincent Lapointe, a multiple-time world champion, to win in 2021. Harper said Harrison’s strong performance in the upset motivated the competition.
“She raised the bar so high with her performance in Tokyo that it’s her fault that it’s not as easy as it was,” Harper said. “I’m not saying it was easy, but it’s her, fault that all the other girls in the world are now trying to get to the bar that she raised too. And a lot of them have reached these newer heights.”
Harper said Harrison remains among the world’s best because of her power and explosiveness, coupled with a rare work ethic.
It hasn’t been all bad for Harrison since winning the gold — she won the world championship in the 200 sprint in 2022, qualified for the U.S. Olympic quota spot by finishing fourth at the 2023 world championships and won the U.S. Olympic trials in March.
Harper said Harrison knows how to “turn on the game face” and believes she is a threat to win in Paris.
“She’s very, very determined that way,” he said. “Like, second place is not an option for her. I think a common theme of all the greats in all the different sports is people say that athlete hates to lose. Nobody likes to lose. But the greats hate to lose with a passion.”
