Interview: Annabel Taylor-Ross

Photos: Jon White

Time for tea, and a chat with… Jon White

In September 2017, Jon White gave the inaugural New Beginnings talk to the sixth form at Blundell’s School. He used his experience of overcoming adversity to motivate the students as they began a new school year.

Annabel Taylor-Ross recalls this first meeting with Jon, his journey to becoming an international paddler, and his partnership with Epic Kayaks and Vaikobi.

I vividly remember being struck by how candid and pragmatic you were when you told the students about the impact of the bomb, the immediate aftermath of receiving life-saving first-aid on the scene, of the carnage. The pupils were transfixed and fascinated by the detail of the casualty evacuation and your subsequent path to recovery and surviving the trauma of three amputations. I was struck by how easily you opened up to the students and answered their questions, putting them at ease. Does it get easier with time to talk about Helmand and the incident?
Talking about my experiences is important to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly I hope others can gain insight and learn from my experience without going through the pain I went through. Secondly, I think it helps me deal with the trauma; every time I tell the story, I recall the memories, and I think I adjust them slightly each time before I ‘file them away’. As a result, I have almost recreated the memories into something I am quite comfortable with, hence why I can speak candidly.

I also remember you literally jumped from the wheelchair you were using onto the tailgate of your Landrover, hauling the chair in after you, launching yourself over the back seats into the front and putting your legs on so you could drive home, all the time talking to me about mutual military mates and comparing our very different experiences of Afghanistan. I’ve never seen your amputations stop you from achieving your goals – has it always been that way?
Of course, they slow me down, but I’ve realised there is no point in deliberating about whether to try something that needs to be done. The quicker it’s done, the better. So I learnt to have a go at things, and that has transferred into my kayaking too.

A few months later, you turned up on the yard, talking to Jim about kayaks, with a friend who was buying a surfski. I know after your first DW, you said never again – what made you get into a kayak again?
When you and I met, I had been through a really tough couple of years. I was back in a wheelchair due to needing revision surgeries to my amputations. It ended up being 17 surgeries over 21/2 years. In amongst that, my marriage collapsed, and I had struggled to work. So when I turned up fit and healthy on the yard, a year into my psychology degree and with work reappearing, I knew it was the time for a challenge again. I got a new kayaking arm made, I sold the sofa in my flat and put my kayak ergo in its place, and I bought a Kirton Teknik second hand. It was the only boat on eBay in my price range. I did my research and realised it would be a challenge to paddle, but I just decided to go for it. Jim introduced me to Francis, who made my first footrest for it. When I told Jim what boat it was, he looked at me with incredulity and said, “I can’t paddle that boat.” Thankfully now he says I look very comfortable in it!

So at what point did you first get into a ski – and was it, love, at first wave?
Having done DW, I started entering the Hasler marathons. Jim grabbed me at the Tamar race and said that I was doing well, but I would enjoy the surfski more. So we hatched a plan that I would do Epic Bay in 2019, and If I could do two laps, then I would do the Icon. Time was tight, though. Jim and I met in the yard to set up a V5 and some suitable prosthetics. He was a bit nervous as I told him to get his angle grinder out and cut feet and shin tubes. Then the Thursday evening before the race, Jim and I went to Exmouth with Dave, who would be my escort paddler. We worked out how to launch me, how to recover me and whether I could steer. Back then, recovering me onto my ski involved rope lines and paddling with a paddle float in my cockpit. Thankfully it has all got a bit simpler now – essentially, I do it the same way as everyone else, just a bit more slowly and with someone steadying my boat if conditions are rough.

So you paddled a race two days after your first ski?
I completed my two laps just before Scooby Lark raced past for his third lap, and they closed the course. My prosthetic arm was uncomfortable that day, so I decided to leave it at the two laps as that was all Jim had asked for. That race didn’t secure the love of the sport but made me realise it was achievable.

And so to the Icon. This ski race, organised by Mark Ressel of Icon Sports, is called the Icon Classic for a good reason – it is a monster of a race from Woolacombe to Combe Martin round the rarely benign Mort Point. I seem to remember it being eventful – remind me?
It started at the race brief. Res standing up and telling us conditions looked testing, and any novices should go and see him, and he would give them their money back. Well, I looked at Dave and Jim and asked how novice is novice. This was going to be my fifth time in a surfski, and I felt very novice! Jim told me I would be fine. They started me with the SUPs at Lee Bay, so I didn’t have to navigate Mort Point. However, the rest of the course was challenging enough for me. Waves seemed to be coming in all directions, and my set-up was still very experimental back then. The knees I had kept collapsing, so I was getting washed forward in the bucket, and at one point, my feet were washed off the footrest and out of the boat.

I swore a lot. Somehow I didn’t swim. Dave, my escort paddler at the final headland, had a swim and was struggling to remount. He was behind me, and it was all I could do to keep myself upright; I couldn’t assist him. I waited around until I saw the safety rib come to help him, then I decided my best move was to crack on as I could see the clearer waters ahead, so I finished the race alone. When Jim met me at the beach and helped out the boat, I told him I was a bit out of my depth. He said to keep that quiet as I had done it!

And so began your surfski career – how’s it gone since that auspicious beginning?
It has been amazing. I made loads of new friends and have now raced in three World events. The Nelo Summer Challenge in 2019 was my first. It was a bit of a landmark as it was the first time the ICF allowed a para-athlete to compete. This resulted from Jim’s vision, belief and determination; he managed to convince them I could do this safely and competitively. As a result, more para-athletes turned up to the world championships in France that year which was great to see. And then I was lucky to get the Atlantic Surfski Race in Lanzarote, just before Covid-19 turned the world upside down in 2020.

Watching people’s reactions when they first meet you can be entertaining. For example, when you collected us from the airport in Portugal where the British Team was competing in the Nelo Summer Challenge World Cup 2019 or walking around the hotel grounds. Their expressions range from bemused to outright staring. Does it ever get to you?
It’s funny, I’m naturally quite shy, so I have had to get used to attracting attention. I think, in many ways, this has helped me grow in confidence. I generally feel that people’s reactions are based on positive surprise and intrigue, so I tend not to get upset or insulted by it. I’ve also learned that people often feel nervous or uncomfortable talking about what’s happened to me, so I try and put them at ease and be super open and honest.

But when people see you in a boat, they can barely tell you have a ‘bionic’ arm and legs. What’s the most challenging part of a race for you?
I love the sense of feeling and looking normal in the boat. At the moment, I have not worked out a way of independently carrying my boat up and down a beach or getting in and out of it alone. The sand or pebbles make it difficult even to walk on my own sometimes, never mind carry a ski. Being fiercely independent has taken some adjustment for me. However, the surfski community is awesome, and people help me out without making a fuss. It’s nice to see teenagers who don’t think twice about grabbing my boat for me or helping me out of the water, or last year two of the guys couldn’t bear to see me struggle up a steep sand dune for the second day in a row, so they dropped their boat and insisted on carrying me up, it took one minute, compared to the 30 minutes it took me the day before.

In GB training camps, on the beach and in the campsites, as one of the seniors in the team, you have a natural way of supporting the younger members, and they quickly look up to you, both as a paddler and a mentor. And with you around, they never complain! This is key to your relationship with Jim, the team manager, as you both share the passion for recognising and developing potential and guiding young folks on and off the water. As a friend, you’ve always been there when I needed support. Can you explain a bit about your course/ training / motivational counselling work… Is this something you’ve always done?
It feels good to help people. I have been lucky throughout my life to have been supported and helped, parents, school, military, charities and loads of individuals. I always enjoyed developing people in my time in the military, and I enjoy that part of my work now, whether it be speaking, running leadership and resilience training courses or coaching people one-to-one. I love seeing youngsters with potential apply themselves, and if I can help in any small way, I do. It might be driving them about. It might be chatting to them. But they all help me too, sometimes physically as described earlier, some of them coach me technically, and they all inspire me too.

You’ve been training like a demon in lockdown. How was lockdown for you? And where do you get the motivation to get back on the Tiverton Canal in all weathers regardless?
I did ok in lockdown. I’m lucky to live in a rural village with the canal on my doorstep. The first strict lockdown coincided with my university dissertation write up, so I had no excuses and produced my best bit of work for my whole degree. Once I was allowed on the canal again, it was easy; I enjoy it and feel good when I do it, and I often feel rubbish if I let my training slip. The only hard part was getting the super high-intensity stuff done. I work harder in a group than alone; the competition element drives me.

As a key and founding member of the Epic UK team, you’ve recently become a brand ambassador for Vaikobi and work closely with Lucy, Ben and Matt in Kirton Kayaks to design your kayak. You’re constantly evolving your paddling arm and legs for your Marathon and surfski racing. Is this cutting edge engineering a means to an end, or does the design and engineering process excite you as much as the racing?
The support from you all has been outstanding. I’m not a straightforward customer; everything is slightly experimental and often needs revisiting. So Epic, Kirton and Michael of Farley Engineering have been understanding and have given huge amounts of time to help me work out what is best for me. Recently we have found a selection of the Vaikobi kit that works for me too, and if it can stand up to my abuse, it must be good. I wreck clothing easily as it gets exposed to my carbon fibre prosthetics with hard surfaces and edges. I love the engineering process, too, thinking through problems or seeking where I can get gains. What’s interesting, though, is often by the time I’ve created an engineering solution, I have often largely overcome it through technique and practice, so I am left with the dilemma of whether to make the change to the new kit or not.

So onwards and upwards, what’s next?
We will be in Paris to watch you in 2024.

The immediate goal is the 2021 European Championships for Ocean Racing. After that, I have one more national sprint regatta, and then it’s time to enter the winter training cycle. I plan to do two big bulking blocks this winter to increase my sprint power. This is hard for me as I am naturally more of an endurance athlete, so I have recently started working with more specialised sprint coaches, Ivan Lawler and Hannah Brown, who have also been very generous with their time. Paris is the long term sprint target, but I also intend to eventually reach Div 2 in Marathon and get out and compete in some more of the big international surfski races.

And we can’t wait to be on the bank to support you. Thank you! Time for another cup?