EKAITZ SAIES

Why the PADDLE GAMES doesn’t have an elaborate and polished masterplan? To stay lean, agile, open to serendipity, and to avoid falling for the Planning Fallacy. Too often, ambitious projects become bogged down by overcomplicated masterplans that assume a predictable future. But reality doesn’t work that way. Instead of relying on rigid, long-term projections, we…

My first experience as a coach happened quite by accident — both figuratively and literally. At the peak of my athletic career, just nine months away from the 2011 Olympic qualifiers, I was involved in a motorbike accident that left me with a broken leg. With my leg in a cast for two months, I…

As a kid, I spent hours flicking through the hundreds of vinyl records that my uncle Xabi had in his room. Some say he was the first—or one of the first—punks in San Sebastian. He had a band, wrote a fanzine, ran a record label, and even released one of the most iconic Spanish punk…

Some years ago, I was flicking through books in a well-known bookstore in the old part of San Sebastian when one caught my attention. By then, we had just returned from our most successful Olympic Games ever—Rio 2016—where we won three gold medals and a bronze. The book was Legacy by James Kerr. Its cover…

The morning air is crisp, biting at the skin. A delicate mist hovers over the still waters of the Holme Pierrepont National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham, catching the pale winter sun. On the water, a group of athletes paddle with quiet determination, their breath curling in the cold air as they prepare for their…