Jüri Jaanson

Who is Jüri Jaanson?

Jüri Jaanson is the most successful Estonian rower of all time and the winner of five medals at Rowing World Championships. He became World Champion in Tasmania 1990 in the single sculls event. 14 years later, at age 38 he won an Olympic silver medal in the single sculls event at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. In Beijing 2008 he won his second Olympic silver medal, this time in the double sculls event with Tõnu Endrekson. He is a member of the SK Pärnu rowing club located in Pärnu. In 2007, Jaanson became the oldest rower ever to win a World Cup event at the age of 41 in Amsterdam.

Jaanson had to overcome a particularly challenging childhood, brought on by a severe case of pneumonia at the age of 2. Doctors gave antibiotics which saved him, but which also left him almost completely deaf. He attended a school for the deaf until he obtained a primitive hearing aid at the age of 12, allowing him to attend a regular school. Still, being a loner, he struggled with fitting in. At Tartu University, when a coach introduced him to rowing, he took to it passionately, in fact so passionately that he left the University to focus on rowing.