Larimer was a participant in an outdoor recreation program started in 1970 by Miller Templeton, the assistant dean of students. He was one of the students who would join Templeton in those early years, bound for the Chattooga, Etowah or Nantahala.
In the summer of 1996, Larimer, IM '74, will be a coach of the U.S. Olympic whitewater canoe and kayak team. In simplest terms, Larimer has taken what he started at Tech and paddled with it. A long way.
Larimer grew up all over America, the son of an employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency. He played football, baseball and hockey, and had done a little rowing, but canoeing quickly became very special.
"I liked being outdoors and I liked being around water," he said. "It was also an attraction of doing something not a lot of other people were doing. It was something different. That was part of the attraction of Georgia Tech in the first place. They were interested in things that not everybody else was interested in."
After graduation, Larimer continued canoeing as an avocation. While working in Atlanta's commercial construction market, he helped start the Atlanta Whitewater Club and became its first president.
By 1979 he had decided to get serious, and determined to find out how good he could become. He set up training sites around Atlanta and threw himself headlong into competition, challenging himself on America's toughest whitewater courses--24 slalom gates scattered across 250 to 300 meters of water. To give himself more time to compete, he became a home builder and remodeler.
After eight years, he finally made the U.S. Whitewater team in 1987 and went to the world championships. He was 34 years old. He made the U.S. team each of the next five years in the two-man event.
In 1992, Larimer and his partner, Steve Holmes, placed fourth in the U.S. Olympic trials--0.8 seconds away from a trip to Barcelona. Believing his 39-year-old, 170-pound body had taken him as far as it could, he retired later that year.
Last year, Larimer was chosen to be a coach of the U.S. Whitewater team. Many members of the U.S. team have moved to Atlanta to be closer to Olympic water and climate. Training is held twice daily at one of three metro-area courses on the Chattahoochee or on Thunder River during Six Flags' off-season.
Larimer, 42, is one of two national team coaches, and there's also a head coach. Each coach is responsible for a specific discipline. Larimer's is canoeing, both single and two-man.
The thrill for Larimer now is working with the finest canoeists in America, helping them sharpen their skills to perfection, searching and training for the tenth-of-a-second they can take off their time. Among his charges is 1992 Olympic gold medalist Joe Jacobi.
The team began training on the Olympic course in spring. That's when a newly designed course was completed on the Ocoee River in southeast Tennessee, 90 minutes from Atlanta.
"Working with some of the very best and most dedicated athletes in the world in my sport is something I really enjoy doing," he said.