Jüri Jaanson


Jüri Jaanson is the most successful Estonian rower of all time and the winner of five medals at World Rowing Championships.

Biography

Jaanson was born in Tartu, and 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. He wears hearing aids on a regular basis and was also seen wearing them during his rowing competitions.
He became World Champion in Tasmania 1990 in the single sculls event. In 1995, he won the Diamond Challenge Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta, rowing for the Parnu Rowing Club.
In 2004 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 and became Estonia's oldest Olympic medal winner with the age of 42 years, 10 months and two days. 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 is among four athletes to compete in rowing at six Olympics, with Romanian Elisabeta Lipă in 2004, Canadian Lesley Thompson in 2008, and Australian James Tomkins.
On 18 November 2010, Jaanson announced ending his career. In July 2011 he was awarded with the Thomas Keller Medal, the highest honor in rowing.
He is also a member of the Estonian parliament, the Riigikogu for the Reform Party.

Olympic Games

Overall wins
  • Single sculls: 1990, 1995
  • Quadruple sculls: 2005
  • Double sculls: 2007