HIGH ACHIEVERS: Potential rower Henrik Neuspiel focused on two major international canoe regattas

By Martin Cleary

Playing a sport is quite often part of childhood development. Some boys and girls like to juggle more than one at a time or even try something new as they move into their teenage years.

Henrik Neuspiel can relate to that.

Hockey was a major part of his life for 10 years with the Leitrim Hawks and Gloucester Rangers. When he attended Merivale High School for Grade 9, he was introduced to track and field, cross-country running, basketball, volleyball, skiing and rugby and was named the boys’ junior athlete of the year.

In the community, he followed the footsteps of his father Victor, learned to kayak through various programs at the Rideau Canoe Club and was recently named to represent Canada at two major international competitions this summer.

Just when you thought Henrik had made kayaking his No. 1 interest, there’s another sport coming into focus on the horizon.

Neuspiel, a Grade 11 honour-roll student in the High-Performance Athletics program at John McCrae High School, hopes to attend an Ivy League university in the United States as a 2025-26 freshman.

Kayaking isn’t part of the Ivy League varsity sports program. But rowing is extremely popular and that’s expected to become Neuspiel’s next sporting assignment.

At six feet, five inches tall, he has the build for rowing plus he’s fit and familiar with being on the water in narrow boats. He’ll just have to get used to going backwards to the finish line instead of seeing where he’s going in a kayak.

In the past year, Neuspiel has taken part in testing by Rowing Canada on the erg indoor rowing machine. His scores have been remarkably impressive and he was ranked No. 1 in the country for the 2023 fall and 2024 spring testing.

“It wasn’t a competition, but part of the tracking of athlete development,” Neuspiel, 17, said in a phone interview this week. “It (rowing) is a good opportunity and hard to turn down. I’m looking to get more into that. I have a lot of room to improve.”

Neuspiel still loves to slide into his kayak for practices and races, but he’s also intrigued by the possibility of rowing becoming his main sport. He could do four years of rowing at university and return to kayaking. Time will tell which sport will become his concentration as he moves into his 20s.

But for now, kayaking is his priority as he is in Halifax this week for a national team training camp before the International Canoe Federation junior and U23 canoe sprint world championships July 17-21 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Neuspiel, who will compete in the men’s junior kayak races at the double worlds, was one of four Rideau athletes named for the U18 championships in Plovdiv. The others are Callie Loch, women’s kayak; Cole Norman, men’s canoe; and Ruby Muhl, women’s canoe.

Two months later, Neuspiel will compete in the boys’ U17 races at the Canoe Sprint Olympic Hopes Regatta (Sept. 19-22) in Szeged, Hungary, along with Carleton Place Canoe Club members Abbigail Haines and Isabel Lowry, who are both in the U16 women’s canoe division.

Canoe Kayak Canada also named three Rideau paddlers for the world U23 championships – Evie Macdonald and Zoe Wojtyk for women’s canoe and Maren Bradley for women’s kayak.

Four of the region’s best paddlers have qualified for the Paris Summer Olympic Games and the Paris Paralympic Summer Games over the next two months.

Rideau’s Toshka Besharah-Hrebacka and Natalie Davison are two of the five Canadians in women’s kayak, while Sophia Jensen of the Cascades Canoe Club will race the women’s C1 200-metre event at the Olympics.

The Ottawa River Canoe Club will be represented at the Paralympics by Brianna Hennessy.

Neuspiel was introduced to kayaking during a one-week camp at Rideau, when he was nine years old. A year or two later, he enrolled in the full summer camp as he enjoyed the sport and being outside every day.

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, he was on the verge of taking a more serious approach to kayaking. While the Rideau Canoe Club was closed, he started training in Manotick with his dad, a former national team member who competed for Canada at the 1995 world junior championships (sixth K2 500 metres with Richard Sullivan) in Japan and the 1999 Pan Am Games (fourth K2 1,000 metres with Krassimir Borissov) in Winnipeg.

“I definitely think that was very beneficial. He would be in his kayak on the water and coaching me,” Neuspiel said.

The training would include an occasional head-to-head race as Neuspiel would do his best to challenge his dad, who “back then still was significantly faster than me.”

The 2024 season has been rewarding for Neuspiel as he paddled well at the Ontario team trials and qualified for the provincial team. At the second Canadian team trials in Montreal, he was fourth in both the men’s junior 500- and 1,000-metre races and second in the K-2 500 metres, despite being sick.

His impressive results made him the only Ottawa and area paddler to earn two international assignments this season.

“I’m super happy,” Neuspiel added about his accomplishment, which will see the Canadian championships held in Welland, ON., in between the two regattas.

“It was definitely the goal. I had put expectations on myself to meet both goals. The criteria was laid out before the race and you knew what to do. When you finished your race and saw your result, you knew if you made the team.”

Neuspiel expects to compete in the men’s K4 race at junior worlds, but hasn’t learned if he will go to the start line for the K1 or K2 races. The other four men’s kayak paddlers are Conrad Hoogerboord, Tate Levy and Carter Naugler, all of the Senobe Aquatic Club, and Luke Enns of Toba Canoe and Kayak Club.

“We have three very fast guys and are looking for a top-five finish,” Neuspiel predicted. “That hasn’t happened in quite a while.”

In September, he’ll return to the Olympic Hopes regatta, where he won the boys’ U16 K2 500-metre bronze medal last year in Poland.

“I’ve accepted the fact there won’t be a lot of time to recover (between regattas),” Neuspiel said. “I’ll keep training for nationals, but after nationals we normally take a week off. But I have Olympic Hopes and I can’t take too much time off.”

Neuspiel has his eye on a possible medal performance at Olympic Hopes.