Jernej Zupancic Regent: Biography

I was born in Ljubljana on 18th of May 1980. From my early childhood I live in Koper, very close to the sea where I spend most of my life. During elementary school I was practicing sports gymnastics and athletics, but then at the age of 11, during a school Sports Day I came in contact with canoeing. From then on I am a member of Zusterna Kayak Canoe club.

At the beginning I loved kayak because it was fun and relaxing, but I soon started to practice seriously and methodologically. From the third year of grammar school I started to practice twice a day, before and after the school. Nevertheless, somehow I always managed to reconcile school and sports obligations very well.

First international successes came in 1997 in collaboration with the Hungarian coach Lajos Horgos. It was also the year when I first won Slovenian Seniors championships. From then on I became member of the Slovenian national team. In 1998 I completed my junior category career with a 5th place at the European junior championships in Nykoping and very good grammar school maturity exam marks.

Important progress was made during my student years. Between 1998 and 2003 I was living in Ljubljana where I practiced together with some best wild water competitors in Slovenia like Dejan Kralj, Aleš Kuder, Jernej and Jurij Korenjak…My studies at the Faculty of Sports were completed in 2003. During these years I started to believe that I can become part of the worlds top competitors. I first reached K-2 1000m finals at world championships together with my training partner Jaka Jazbec (Sevilla 2002), I won a silver medal in K-1 1000m at the Student world championships (Bari 2002) and a first senior world cup medal in K-2 1000m (Hazenwinkel 2003).

Constant results between top 15 in the world were reached in collaboration with another Hungarian coach Laszlo Kovacs with whom I have workd from december 2003. Under his guidance I obtained important results at world cup races, 11th place at European championships and qualified for the Olympics where I got 15th.

During 2004 I started to plan my workouts together with more well-known sport scientists (sport psychologist Matej Tušak Ph.D, conditioning coach Boštjan Jakše, physiologist Anton Ušaj Sc.D, with the sport consulting company VI Šport and Vojko Strojnik Sc.D). From there on I also started to practice more frequently with foreign national teams (Slovak Republic, Canada, New Zealand, Greece, Denmark, Switzerland, France, South Africa…) to improve the quality of my trainings. The method was proven to be good as I improved a lot my results in the following seasons of 2005 and 2006. As the progress is evident, it looks like this combining of experiences from a larger support team is the best way to achive my final goal that is, to be successful at the Olympic games in Beijing 2008!