BY CORRAN ADDISON
Photos:
Mark Richards,
Tony Tickle,
Corran Addison,
Peter Tranter and
Antoine Lamielle
Corran Addison is a regular contributor to the Paddler magazine, owns Soul Waterman and competed for south africa in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
An interview with… Richard Fox
I grew up, in South Africa, being inspired from afar by several paddlers. One of these was none other than the legendary Richard Fox, who by 1985 when I moved to Europe was already a three-time world champion in kayak slalom. Richard would go on to become the most successful slalom kayaker in history with 13-world championship titles (including the ‘pre-worlds’) to his name.
I dabbled in slalom as a junior, making the provincial team in South Africa as a junior, but it was never a focus for me. By the mid-1980s, slalom boats were already pretty far removed in design and purpose from my everyday paddler (a Perception Dancer).
In 1988 I got to spend a week in Japan with Richard. On a trip to Japan, I was Perception’s new designer to pitch a new idea to Mont-bel (the Perception importer), and Richard was there to teach some slalom training camps for Mont-bel. I had my latest new playboat design with me (it never saw production) and spent most of my time in that. But Richard encouraged me to jump into his slalom boat and do some of the workout routines with the Japanese team paddlers, and at the end of the camp, we had an ‘impromptu’ race.
Richard of course, won it by a country mile, but I came in second, and afterwards, he pulled me aside and told me I was wasting my talents and should race.
One thing that did come about from this week was Perception agreed to build his latest slalom boat, the Reflex, in plastic. After the 1988 pre-worlds on the Savage, he left his slalom boat with us to make a mould from as a starting point, and once Richard did that, I appropriated the boat and began to ‘do gates’. It was more of a skills improvement thing for me than anything else. The slalom boat was now radically different from anything I usually paddled (working on the Corsica, and paddling a 275cm prototype playboat as my daily paddler).
In 1989 Richard won the world championships again, a race I witnessed in person as I was there to do ‘freestyle demos’ for Perception between classes. You know – mucking about on waves while athletes do real work. Again Richard berated me about racing, pointing out that slalom was now slated for the Olympics in 1992, and this time the penny dropped. On returning to Perception, I ordered a new Reflex2 and began to train in earnest.
Over the next few years, as I raced my way to Barcelona, I would alternate between paddling slalom – one sport – and kayaking, which I perceived as a completely different sport altogether. Despite making it to the Olympics, as a back-marker, slalom did make me the kayaker I eventually became. Over those four years, the skills I learned took me from being an OK paddler to one of the top ones of my generation in freestyle and extreme paddling.
I am not alone in this. Eric Jackson and Scott Shippley are other examples of a slalom paddlers who excelled in other disciplines. More recently, Nouria Newman is an example of what slalom can do for kayaking skills.
But slalom and modern kayaking remained at best distant cousins, and I’m afraid that they have drifted so far apart that they are not on speaking terms with time. Even with the 2005 rule change that saw slalom kayaks drop from 400cm to 350cm, it was almost too little too late. Everyday kayaks were by then under the 200cm mark, with a ‘long’ boat being 250cm.
So why this rambling introduction? Context. I caught up with Richard after nearly two decades, and we chatted about the state of slalom, the recent inclusion of ‘extreme slalom’ into the ICF fold, his daughters Noémie and Jessica’s successes, and where we saw kayaking, and perhaps more precisely, slalom, going in the future.
Here is the interview I did with him after our chat.
Hi Richard. The last time I saw you was the 1995 USA freestyle team trials where you taught slalom clinics and were roped into judging the freestyle event. Back then, you were married to Myriam, but not a father yet, and were winding down your competitive career. Briefly, what have you been up to since then?
Actually, I was a father by then. Jess was born in 1995 and Noémie followed in 1997. After the Atlanta Olympics, I joined the ICF Slalom Committee, and the first thing that happened was that slalom was booted off the Sydney 2000 schedule. Not a good start!
I got involved in the campaign for reinstatement which took us through to August 1997. In January 1998, I started work as the Slalom Head Coach in Australia. Initially, we went to Australia for just a couple of years, which have now turned into 23 and counting.
Penrith at the foot of the Blue Mountains in Western Sydney has become our home. The Whitewater Stadium, our office and playground. I was the Coach for slalom and then the Performance Director for both Olympic disciplines from 2005 through Beijing London and Rio. After a stint working with the French team, I returned to Australia at the end of 2019 and haven’t been anywhere since!
I’m working with Paddle Australia on a revitalization project for the Whitewater Stadium. Think upgrades, a second channel we call an ‘easy river’ and solar and battery power for the pumps. Watch this space.
Your daughter Jessica has become a multiple world champion in both K1 and C1. Did she naturally gravitate to slalom, with both her parents being world champions, or did it take some prodding?
You’ll have to ask her that! Both Jess and Noémie grew up on the river bank, so to speak, and paddling was never far away, and it was a natural thing for us to do on holidays when they were young. When they were ready, they got into it learning to roll and making the jump onto whitewater.
As you stepped down from the limelight, and Jessica stepped into your shadow, there must have been some challenges, before she stepped out of it and became a success story in her own right.
Things happened quickly once Jess got selected to the Australian Olympic Team for London. She was 18 and already had a couple of world championships under her belt. The media loved the story that her Dad was fourth in Barcelona, her mum third in Atlanta and then she went one better winning silver in London.
We hear a lot about Jessica, but tell me about Noémie.
Noémie followed in the paddle strokes and is carving her graceful turns on the river and elsewhere in life. She has been a regular Aus team member in K1 and C1 from junior to senior, winning a team gold last year in C1 with Jess and Ros Lawrence. She’s now studying for a Masters in Management at Sydney University and currently on location on an internship in Switzerland, she might hit you up for a snowboard before you know it!
Freestyle when we last saw each other was in its infancy, while slalom was an old and established discipline that at a glance had minimal similarity as a sport to what kayaking had become. Paddlers competing in that freestyle event were using the same boat to compete as they would the next day to run a river. Slalom is not like this, but it was not always this way. Tell me about the roots of slalom. How did slalom originally come about?
Well, there is a lot of storytelling floating about at the moment on social media that is good to follow. Things got going in Europe just before World War II, and some pioneering days were for sure. It was a boat handling skill test first and foremost, folding boats and no lifejackets or helmets. Fibreglass made a huge difference, and things became more organized through the fifties and sixties. Boat designs and the rules evolved, and there were some massive leaps and bounds. The Munich Olympics at Augsburg in 1972 is definitely worth a look. Imagine racing on that tight and surging artificial course in a four-metre boat which you couldn’t dip under poles.
By the early 1980s there seemed to be a significant divergence of ‘kayaking’ from ‘slalom’. Kayak lengths were dropping. Perception released the Dancer in 1982 that was 350cm, and Pyranha shortly afterwards the Mountain Bat that was 330cm. By 1994 whitewater kayaker was under 250cm. Do you think that slalom boats being locked into the 400cm length affected how kayakers at large perceived slalom, and what effect did it have on slalom participation?
I think the ’80s were a boom time for participation in the UK and other countries. In the UK the sport was organized into multiple divisions, and there were many competitions across the country on any given weekend from early spring until late autumn. The sport became more specialized, and the lower volume boats were less suited to river running. The 4m length was a throwback to the old days when the boats couldn’t pass under the poles. The longer courses with winning times around 210 seconds matched this. The shorter artificial courses that followed eventually led to pressure to change. Looking back, some people lost their best years paddling to those rules and longboats!
Clearly, the announcement that slalom was back in the Olympics in 1992 injected new blood into slalom. I’m an example of that. But I get the impression it was a momentary surge in rekindled interest that quickly waned. What are your thoughts on this?
Barcelona 92 was a turning point for slalom; there is no doubt. The Olympic status brings investment, professionalism, specialization. Not everyone can make it.
There can be no question that with the nature of artificial courses as the go-to venue for slalom, combined with the 350cm length, it went through a significant technical revival. Slalom today is far more exciting to watch, it’s explosive, and barely resembles the discipline that you and I did. As a national coach and father of Jessica and Noémie Fox who have taken the slalom world by storm, you’ve been on the cutting edge of this change. Tell me about it.
I would say there has been a progressive consensus among teams to create an attractive spectacle, particularly the Czechs. Even though not everyone agrees on every aspect of the sport, the athletes have evolved the sport tremendously in the last 5-10 years through their technique and on-the-edge racing. We’ve seen the introduction of C1 women and switching, even by some men who have sold their souls according to some purists! Upstream gates have been revolutionized, and vintage paddlers have learned new techniques to avoid the ‘old school’ label.
Within three years of the rule change to 350cm, all slalom kayaks were exactly 350cm long. Do you think they would be shorter if they were allowed to be, and what would be the advantage to slalom (rather than ‘big picture’ of slalom within kayaking overall) if boats were allowed to develop naturally?
That’s a good point. There has been a trend down to the 350cm limit with the technical evolution and trend towards tight courses. I am sure some athletes would go shorter in a flash because they are tired of wearing down their ends on concrete walls. How much shorter, I don’t know. It depends on the course designs. Speed versus manoeuvrability has always been part of the equation. When I sit in my boat (Vajda Salto) or see it in profile on a car, I sometimes wonder what all that length is for. Does it help? When I see younger paddlers in a 350cm boat, it certainly looks too long.
Although slalom has gone through a fantastic and exciting revolution over the last decade or so, it’s still far removed from everyday paddling. Slalom boats barely resemble the kayaks used by everyday paddlers. Participation in slalom is also dropping. Do you think that the discrepancy in the equipment from standard kayaking equipment and slalom equipment plays a role in this drop?
I think there are many reasons for shifts in participation and I wouldn’t attribute it to the type of boat necessarily. Today, COVID will be a significant barrier moving forward, and some will never come back to competitive paddling of any sort. Some of the forces at play are economical, and others are the forces of specialization and professionalism. The gap between haves and have-nots. Like access to high-level coaching, good training water on a daily basis. An ability to travel almost permanently for training and competition. The best get better and become out of reach. The sport has to reinvent itself at the lower levels in many cases, but it can’t be left alone to figure it out without resources. The top end has to be part of the solution, too. So, the boat specification is a fundamental question for consideration.
You mentioned to me that Jessica has about eight boats scattered all over the world at any one time. Not everyone has this luxury, so rather than focusing on things like boat lengths, wouldn’t efforts to level the playing field in other ways be more beneficial? Perhaps a boat limit where one boat has to be used for every event all year? Or the ‘have’ countries need to donate a certain percentage of their allocated money to developing nations? These are just ideas, but what are your thoughts on how we can help underrepresented countries and athletes come to the fore?
Haha, it actually might be more than eight, but who is counting! Living in Australia is a challenge, and she does do both C1 and K1 events. I agree; it is a luxury afforded to only a few in any sport. The level playing field or ‘monotype’ design often comes up as a question linked to paddle sports development. At the same time, technological advances help accelerate learning, accessibility and performance. Imagine if we had done that back in the day and we were still stuck with a four-metre boat!
There are limiting factors to development beyond equipment which also needs to be addressed. Growing the global paddlesports economy through industry and commercial partnerships is essential so that the offering towards development can be greater. Identifying and developing athletes, coaches, and local structures, accessing facilities and equipment, and travelling, training, and competing require significant investment and support wherever you are.
One model I like is the partnerships some federations have with smaller nations supporting access for identified athletes to training centres, where the infrastructure is in place, with additional support for outreach projects back in the home countries. It is not easy to put in place because of competing priorities, but it is essential for the global community’s health and wellbeing.
Finally, I would say the Extreme event’s introduction brings additional opportunity for worldwide development in whitewater disciplines as a whole.
Ironically, in the last five years, whitewater kayaks have been creeping back up again in length. I have two kayaks that are 300cm long in my lineup, and there are a dozen 275cm long ones out there that vaguely resemble a short puffy slalom kayak. We refer to them as ‘half slice’ boats as the tails are thin enough to pivot, but the bows are high volume for running challenging whitewater. Slalom skills translate directly to paddling these kayaks, and we see a lot of old slalom paddlers using them nowadays as they can relate to how these boats are paddled. However, we’re still not seeing a migration of ‘half slice’ paddlers moving across to slalom. Why do you think this is?
Well, one answer is it’s quite simple, rules are rules. If your boat is not 350cm or more, you can’t race. You’ve got to have the gear. Then there’s the weight difference, which is sometimes double. Also, plastic doesn’t handle or perform like composite, so you need to adjust and get used to the nervous twitch of a vacuumed carbon epoxy F1. Finally, to do well in slalom like anything these days you’ve got to put the time in for specific practice. I’m not sure many of the ‘half slice’ crowd want that. However, I see those boats on the water, and the trick would be to switch across early and go hand in hand.
The ICF has recently included ‘extreme slalom’ into its fold. While the moniker ‘extreme’ is silly, as these races will take part on class 3, (they are generally known as boater-cross) it seems to me that clearly, the ICF is trying to do something to remain relevant to whitewater kayaking as a whole.
My take on the name is that it is an extreme version of slalom rather than slalom on extreme whitewater. I think it was branded to catch attention inside the Olympic channels and media and the public. It might have stuck for better or worse, and I don’t think it’s a big deal, for a viewer who might easily relate to that descriptor. There are more important things to figure out! There are many anomalies in sport, like calling a 1000m kayak or canoe event a sprint!
That’s a good point on the name. Why do you think that the ICF has shown a specific interest in boater cross/extreme slalom rather than freestyle, which was also on the table?
I can’t speak for the ICF or IOC except to say I think several influences are at play, including the perceived broadcast appeal of a close contact head to head format racing on whitewater and the unpredictability of a mass start event like in BMX or snowsports. I guess we are far too implicated ourselves to be objective about what is appealing or not to the Olympic audience. I think all forms of paddling competition have great visual appeal when presented right, and it is tough to make choices between disciplines or events. I haven’t been close to the decision making process at all, but now that it’s done. I think we have to make the most of the opportunity and create the best event possible.
The ICF has so far decided that the boats used are mass-produced creek shapes. However, the athletes will most likely be slalom paddlers who by choice or obligation participate in these ‘Chinese downhill’ full contact events. What challenges do you think will be faced by slalom paddlers as they attempt to adapt back and forth to these big round boats from their slalom boats?
You’ve said it all. I think the boat specs should be reviewed, for sure! To enable that there needs to be a market force at play and people willing to invest in design, production and distribution, so the ‘mass-produced’ criteria are met.
To this point, players that have been providing gear for slalom for decades have been summarily excluded from participating in ‘extreme slalom’ because the boats have to be ‘mass-produced’. It’s unclear what this means currently. Do you agree with this decision, and if not, how would you have gone about making the event ‘relatable’ to the masses of whitewater paddlers, while being inclusive of all kinds of equipment suppliers?
I guess it is the way forward that counts most rather than the rules or choices so far which, after all, got the event across the line and into the Games. Now, it is crucial to have a growth mindset. Firstly, to consult and optimize a short term format and model through to Paris to create certainty while maximizing the opportunity and appeal, matched with a longer lens looking towards global development and synergy within the sport.
It seems like there is potential to bring together the slalom worlds and whitewater kayaking words with these boater cross events, to be held on the same venues, at the same time, and hopefully at some point, with a mixture of top slalom and top extreme paddlers going head to head: a mixing of worlds and ideas. What is your opinion on how we (ICF, various national governing bodies, and the kayak industry as a whole) should be focused to maximize the potential long term results of this new event?
It’s an excellent opportunity to synergize. The first step is to have a quick open dialogue. Many players in the industry have been associated with slalom over decades and can offer an industry perspective that has been lacking or ignored. Many athletes have succeeded in freestyle or extreme paddling from a slalom background; they too have an informed perspective of different worlds. And, of course, the current crop of slalom paddlers are mixed in their views. Some have embraced Extreme, others yet to try!
With Paris getting the 2024 Olympics, slalom is once more included. But there is no guarantee that slalom will make the cut in the Los Angeles 2028. Given that the largest kayaking segment in the world is in the USA, this would be a travesty. How can we utilize this new meshing of boater cross and slalom to inspire young paddlers all around the world to get into slalom and keep it relevant to kayaking overall so that Los Angeles is motivated to keep it in the games?
A stronger connection must be made between whitewater paddling as an activity and slalom as an expression of this in the Olympic arena. Extreme will help this if the messaging is designed and managed well.
In 1989 Perception made your winning kayak, the Reflex in plastic, and some years later, a newer one called the Fox. While these were under the regulation length (400cm at the time) it seems they played a large part in getting people to at least experiment with slalom. It was a kayak that could be raced on Saturday (if event organizers were willing to waive the 400cm rule) and be taken river running on Sunday. Since most kayaks were in the 330cm range then, a plastic slalom of 375 was at least ‘somewhat relevant’.
This would have been tough to do ten years ago as the disparity between slalom and river running kayaks was vast (250cm compared to 350cm). Still, in recent years as I mentioned before, some modern kayaks have been inching their way back up in length, and in shape, just slightly towards slalom. Do you think a new ‘Fox’ design that capitalizes on the rapprochement of slalom and ‘half slice’ would be possible, and that it could present the opportunity to get whitewater paddlers to try slalom at a club level (providing of course that clubs wave the 350cm rule as they used to do for the Reflex and Fox)?
It’s funny you should mention that. Over the Southern summer just before COVID, I hatched a plan to develop a new Fox (the Firefox). It is definitely time. And let’s see what it looks like and paddles like before we worry about rules!
In the late 80s I remember doing timed runs at Bourg St Maurice from top to bottom. First, in my slalom kayak and then in a plastic Reflex, and years later, I did the same in the Fox. I got pretty tired, but I was surprised how close I came to my time in a boat twice the weight! What I didn’t do then was test a composite version.
If you were emperor Fox, and could command the paddling world to do as you wished with absolute power, what would you do; for paddling in general, and/or slalom? What would be your vision for the sport, and how would go about achieving that (beyond what we’ve already discussed)?
Firstly, I don’t think we should have an emperor, more a collective of wise minds that reach beyond the boundaries of an individual or national interests. Diversity is an undervalued quality in life, and our sport is rich in its diversity and opportunity. I think the Planet Canoe brand is under-sold. We need to strengthen the presence and promotion of all paddling activity for health, wellbeing, recreation, tourism, and elite competition. The partnerships for this journey, whether commercial or institutional, do not visibly exist and yet they are essential for our future. We are paddlers first, Olympians second and then hopefully we finish our days close to the water!
Federations that rely on Olympic funding have become very channelled in their focus. We can understand the political agendas here. But there is a disconnect inside and outside the structures. I would like to see some of the key connections reestablished in critical yet straightforward ways.
Promoting the connection of our Olympic sport with natural environments is an important way to strengthen paddling. Open water paddling in the ocean or inland waters is healthy and accessible anywhere in the world. It should be reflected more strongly in programs presented by federations. The same can be said for whitewater; there is more of it around than we imagine. We just need to reframe and be more diverse in our thinking.
Here is an example: what if we had raced through the city in front of the iconic buildings in London, each stroke touching a part of that history, or if in Paris we could have thought to do the same. How would that look to you?
Getting back to you, what’s next for Richard? Where do you go from here? Your contribution to kayaking as an athlete and standing behind athletes and the organizations they’re a part of is second to none. Where do you go now? I can’t see you sliding into obscurity.
Richard: Well, I’ve been pretty busy this past year working with Paddle Australia and other stakeholders to promote Penrith Whitewater Stadium’s redevelopment. The venue is getting pretty tired 20 years after the Sydney Olympics and needs new investment. I’d like to see that project through and connect the sport and its activities more closely to the community.
Meanwhile, despite a controversial process, we have landed in Paris with new events and an exciting opportunity to connect our past to our future. Perhaps I’ll have a paddle in that direction too.
I can just imagine Richard Fox entering the extreme slalom in a final effort at Olympic gold.
It’s been great catching up with you, and as always your vision and views are so global in perspective, so forward-thinking while remaining grounded in reality, that it’s thought-provoking and enlightening. Thanks for your time.
Richard: Merci à toi
