CanoeKayak Canada's Loss

Anne Merklinger director general of Canoekayak Canada announced today that she was leaving the organization she has served proudly for the last 15 years to become the director of summer sport for the Own the Podium program. And while a coup for the Own the Podium program the announcement comes at a big loss to an organization she helped resurect.


When Merklinger came to Canoekayak Canada the organization had limited funding and won a single Olympic medal from 1988 through to 1996. Since then, CanoeKayak Canada has won eight medals at the past three Summer Olympiads. And in Adam van Koeverden and Caroline Brunet, the organization has produced two of Canada’s most decorated Olympians.

An athlete in her own right first as a national team swimmer then as an elite curler, Merklinger understood that the key to a sport organization was to direct as many resources as possible towards its athletes and coaches. Today, seven coaches work with the Canadian national team while regional coaches have been hired to identify and train paddlers across the country.

The benefactor is the sport itself. Not only is canoe-kayak Canada’s most successful sport at the past three Summer Olympiads, but as Merklinger herself acknowledges, “Athletes in competitive programs have increased by twenty, or twenty-five percent. In 2003, we had forty-five clubs. Now, we have eighty. Twenty-five (of those clubs) have full-time year-round coaches. There are a lot of opportunities to be a professional canoeist and kayaker.”

`Anne is an extraordinary talent whose athletic background, business acumen and leadership skills bring immense value to our organization as Own the Podium continues to deliver the resources Canadian athletes need to excel against the world's best,'' Alex Baumann, executive director (summer), for Own the Podium said in a statement.


In her new role Anne will help bring recommendations to the senior management team, lead annual reviews, and develop new programs and policies to help Canada's summer Olympians reach their full potential. If history is any indicator Anne will thrive in her new role creating enhanced opportunities for all summer sport athletes except for maybe Canada's canoeists and kayackers who only yesterday had Anne all to themselves.