PAU, France—If you were a traffic cop and saw this thing rolling down the highway, you would pull it over too.

But Ben Hayward can explain, usually while forking over his license and registration. The wooden cabin bolted to the back of his truck? It’s there for a reason. This is his house.

A tightly packed 26-year-old from Edmonton with a bushy, auburn beard, Hayward is Canada’s top-ranked slalom canoeist. And for the past two years, he’s been on a permanent road trip through the sport’s European hotspots to qualify for this summer’s Olympics.

“I’ve been pulled over a whole bunch of times by cops trying to figure out what the heck this is,” he said.