Richard Hounslow

Richard Hounslow is an World and European champion and double Olympic Silver medallist in the sport of canoe slalom, he is also an inspirational and motivational sports and after dinner speaker who talks about difficult decisions and his sporting success despite setbacks and injury and the resilience and motivation he needed to succeed.
After narrowly missing out on a place at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Richard was ready call time on his Olympic dream and take up a place at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and train to become an Officer in the British Army.  However, as an avid sports fan as well as competitor, he couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement of watching his friends compete and medal in Beijing. The fire had been stoked and the dream was alive once again. A new challenge of competing in the canoe doubles (C2) alongside his familiar kayak singles (K1) event was just what was needed to help with the decision to keep pushing on with his sporting career.

His decision to compete proved to be the right one when Richard gained immediate success with a Medal at the World and European Championships in 2010.  He was then delighted to be selected for London 2012 in both C2 and K1.  Although Richard was disappointed with a poor result in the K1 in 2012, these feelings soon changed to elation when he won Olympic Silver in the C2, being pipped to the gold by a mere 0.37s by his GB team mates.   Richard took the top spot on the podium, being crowned World Champion in 2013.

Although the K1 event was where Richard started in the sport, it had been the C2 that had proved to be his most successful. Following the 2015 World Championships and less than one year out from the Rio Olympics, he made the difficult decision to focus solely on the C2 event to maximise his chances of winning Gold in 2016.  With Rio being the final time the C2 event would be in the Olympic programme, he had set himself down a path that was leading toward retirement. On the day, it was once again agonisingly close, with Richard placing 2nd and winning Silver by only 0.42s….!

Even with Olympic Gold eluding him by a combined 0.79s over two Olympics, Richard has amassed an impressive haul of 20 medals across Olympic, World and European Championship events over a 10 year senior competitive career.