From Ayr harbour to the Olympics for Canoeist!

Aug 1 2008 by Edwin Lawrence

HE first paddled a canoe as a 10-year-old in Ayr harbour. And now John Anderson is in Beijing, leading the British Olympic canoe team.

John, 50, is performance director for British Olympic Canoeing, and aims to inspire the team to medal glory.

“We got two medals in Sydney – a silver and a bronze. Then three in Athens – a silver and two bronze.

“Now we we’re definitely chasing gold,” said John.

One of his top medal hopes is white water slalom star Campbell Walsh, a Scot who is European champion and who gained silver in Athens.

John could never have imagined that canoeing with the Sea Scouts in Ayr harbour could lead to his sporting career.

“I remember us going on a canoeing trip to Heads of Ayr,” he recalled.

John was at Holmston Primary when he first became interested in canoeing, going on to Belmont Academy.

His dad, Robert Anderson, was manager of the Scottish & Newcastle Brewery depot in Ayr back in the 1960s.

John left Belmont Academy at 17, and went straight into the RAF, where he trained as a PE officer.

He had plenty of scope for his interest in canoeing, representing Great Britain throughout the 1970s and 80s.

A highpoint came when he represented Scotland in the 1986 Commonwealth Games at Edinburgh.

John retired from competition in 1988, and became national coach for canoeing in Great Britain for nine years.

He took up his post as performance director in 1997, based at the National Watersports Centre in Nottingham.

John left the RAF that year, after 23 years’ exemplary service.

He had even been awarded an MBE in 1991, for services to sport and for his national and international work in the RAF.

John is married to Lynn, who hails from Durham, and the couple have two sons, Grant, 22, and Robbie, 20.

Grant is in the British canoe team, but didn’t make the Olympic squad.

Robbie, who was born in Ayr, is proud to play rugby for the Scottish Exiles.

John will be coming back to Ayr on holiday in September.

And he aims to get some canoeing in while he’s here.

“I hope to canoe round Ailsa Craig, starting and finishing from Girvan harbour,” he said.

“It’s something I did when I was 16, and I’d like to do it again.”

John also wants to canoe right round Arran, having made the crossing from Ardrossan by canoe in his younger days, when he was in canoe clubs in Prestwick and Irvine.

He still has cousins, aunts and uncles in Ayr. And he said: “When it’s time to call it a day, I wouldn’t mind coming home to retire.”