Silver medal star Joe Clarke has his eyes on LA in 2028
Sitting in the heart of Paris, silver medal round his neck, Joe Clarke is dreaming of California.
Los Angeles, to be precise, host city for the next Olympics four years from now.
“That’s what’s next, isn’t it?” says Clarke. “I don’t want to look too far ahead but that is how we work as Olympians, in four-year cycles.
“I feel like I am already signed up for the next one and I have only just finished competing here.
“My wife knows and fully expects me to say the same, she knows what she has signed up for too.”
It is not that Clarke wants to quickly forget Paris. Though he leaves with silver, having arrived hunting two golds, there is satisfaction in having done everything he could in both the K1 slalom and kayak cross to achieve the target.
With a little more fortune, a turn of the paddle here, a run of the water there, he might well have done so.
A fifth-placed finish in last week’s slalom, after qualifying quickest for the final, was followed by Monday’s second place in kayak cross. Clarke, a three-time world champion in the discipline and favourite to win inaugural Olympic gold, won every round up to the final, where a collision with Germany’s Noah Hegge right at the start ultimately cost him dear.
The morning after he is in a happy, if philosophical mood.
“It is very much what happens on the day. I think of you re-run that final I could easily have a gold,” he says.
