Coronado’s very own Hans Henken joined former water polo Olympian Jesse Smith on the list of Islanders with Olympic medals this summer when he and his sailing partner Ian Barrows took home the bronze medal in Marseille, France. Finishing behind Spain and New Zealand, the American team placed third in the 49er event.
Henken said that the opportunity to compete in the Olympics was not something he took for granted, even though his experience in Marseille might have differed from many of the other athletes.
“It meant the world to me; it was my childhood dream to compete at the Olympic Games and to finally complete that goal has been one of the best moments of my life,” he said. “Since I competed at a satellite village, during my competition I only stayed with sailing athletes, but overall that didn’t change how I felt in the slightest.”
Despite being somewhat isolated from the rest of the games, the American duo still had to weather a storm of distractions. They were in the South of France after all.
Henken said staying in the present moment and avoiding stewing over past mistakes or future problems was one of the biggest challenges.
“There are a lot of distractions at the Games, especially while competing,” he said. “Some give you energy and others take away, so it’s a challenge to balance all of that and continue to push to have your best performance.”
A memorable experience
Henken said he had trained to compete in each of the past four Olympic Games and came up short, so to not only qualify this time but also to medal, was an incredible and memorable experience.
“I knew we had the ability to win a medal and our goal was to go into the final race with a chance and that is exactly what we did,” he said. “To win a medal means the world to me. It’s a life long dream completed and really was all the hard work coming together all at once.”
Although the next opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games will be on home soil in Los Angeles, Henken said he hasn’t committed to anything yet.
“For sure competing at a home Olympics in LA would be amazing, but there are a lot of other aspects of my life that I’m looking to balance out in that equation,” he said.
His next goal
One of those other aspects is his interest in becoming an astronaut, a career he said he’s had in the back of his mind since he was 5 years old.
“I went to Stanford and studied Aerospace Engineering as a way to continue to work towards that dream,” he said. “It’s another goal that I have been running in the background, working on and pushing towards, and it would be another major life moment to be able to work in that sphere and take it on.”
Henken spent much of his collegiate career exploring and working in the field, including working as a researcher for the Mechanical Engineering Turbulent Research Laboratory and the Propulsion System Design Laboratory at Stanford, where he worked with a group of students to develop a scaled hybrid rocket engine from the ground up.
Now that the Olympics and all its commotion have concluded, Henken aims to do one thing:
“I’m going to give myself time to really appreciate this moment and take it all in; it’s been a long, long road to get here,” he said.
