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Friday, 29 March 2024

Canoeist trains for Olympics in girlfriend's pool

Duration: 01:18s 0 shares 1 views

Canoeist trains for Olympics in girlfriend's pool
Canoeist trains for Olympics in girlfriend's pool

Argentine athlete Sebastian Rossi is training for the 2021 Olympics with an innovative home setup -- inside his girlfriend's swimming pool.

Gloria Tso has more.

No gym is no problem for Olympic hopeful Sebastian Rossi.

The Argentine athlete is paddling furiously with his canoe strapped to a pair of palm trees - inside his girlfriend's swimming pool.

Rossi is a wildwater slalom racer, but social distancing is keeping him away from whitewater rapids.

Pool training presents an entirely different kind of challenge.

'It's a bit tedious to be in the pool day after day, compared to proper training in nature with fast water doing what I like.

This sport helps you to relate to water, with rivers, so to be trapped at home in the pool, it's difficult, but I do it because it's necessary." Rossi says his innovative home set-up was inspired by his father, who first gave him basic kayaking lessons at a municipal pool in Buenos Aires.

He's loved the sport ever since.

And fresh off his silver medal at the Pan American Games in 2019, Rossi now hopes to qualify for the Olympics.

"We adapted some bicycle straps we had and that simulates paddling when we row upstream.

We more or less managed to improvise in order to train.

Although it's not optimal, it's better than nothing." Despite the Summer Olympics being postponed until next year, Rossi says he remains optimistic about his chances to paddle on the world stage.

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