Elena Lilik was already cheering like a winner after crossing the finish line and was crying with joy. After 25 anxious minutes of waiting for the last starter, it was clear: the slalom canoeist’s tour de force through the wild waters of the Stade Nautique de Vaires-sur-Marne was worth silver. The 25-year-old from Kanuschwaben Augsburg has thus won the first medal for the German Canoe Association (DKV) at the Olympic Games in Paris, after the top favorites Ricarda Funk and Sideris Tasiadis came away empty-handed.

“The wait was so much harder than the run itself, but I did it. It completely surprised, overwhelmed and shocked me because the run was somehow unreal,” said Lilik.

After the award ceremony, she spontaneously jumped over the barriers and let her family celebrate. “I’ve been looking for her the whole time and I had a crisis. I had to go to my mom, had to see if she was OK, if she could still stand,” said Lilik, and then got a big kiss from her husband.

The 2021 Canadian world champion completed the whitewater course with 23 gates flawlessly in 103.54 seconds. As in the kayak, the Olympic victory went to Australian Jessica Fox in 101.06 seconds. Third place went to Evy Leibfahrt from the USA in 109.95 seconds. The semi-finalist Gabriela Satkova from the Czech Republic only came seventh.

“This silver medal was very clean and meticulously earned. You can only take your hat off to her. It was such a great run. It’s great that we have silver,” said DKV sports director Jens Kahl. “She did very well,” praised national coach and father Thomas Apel.

Tasiadis was once her coach

In her adopted home of Augsburg, the Weimar native has been sitting in a boat since she was a child. “As little girls in Augsburg, we clung to the lampposts and said: we’re not going down there,” she recalled. Sideris Tasiadis, the trainer of the children’s group, did the convincing work at the time. “He sent us down the arched bridge five times and we swam five times, but it was a nice experience,” Lilik reported.

At first, things didn’t go well at all. But she always fought through. “She’s a real show-off,” said Tasiadis appreciatively. Her sports-loving family also helped a lot. “It didn’t always come from me. But I learned from home that you never give up, you always keep going,” said the athlete.

At some point it paid off. “And then it was fun,” she said. This also pleased her dad Thomas, the national kayak coach who has been training the double starter since 2020: “We put so much work and nerves into it, it brought us together in a completely different way.”

Family and lucky charms present

In addition to her husband Leon, her mother Daniela and her younger sister Emily, also a top canoeist, were cheering her on in the stands. And then there are her lucky charms. “Definitely my mother’s crocheted pillow, nothing else works,” said Lilik. “And then I got earrings from my mother-in-law, which I’m wearing here.”

Learning from ice hockey

In August 2021, she married ice hockey player Leon Lilik from Riga, who now works as an athletics coach for the German runner-up Fischtown Pinguins Bremerhaven. Since her passport was not ready in time, she competed in the World Cup in September under her birth name Apel.

The World Championships in Bratislava were her breakthrough into the absolute world class: after silver in the kayak, she won her first individual title in the Canadian canoe and then followed that up with silver in the kayak cross. Now she also has an Olympic medal.