Jess Fox canoeing and kayaking – career portrait

redbull.com:

She has a cabinet full of world titles and multiple Olympic medals, but Australia’s top paddler isn’t done yet."A bit intense but also wonderful." That’s how the greatest paddler of all time, , describes her childhood growing up at the foot of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, with her parents and younger sister, Noemie. Her parents had had their own successful careers in paddling - mum Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi won bronze at the 1996 Games for her home country of France, and dad Richard Fox won five individual and five team World Championships for Great Britain.

In 1998, the pair packed up their life in Marseilles and moved to Sydney with their two young daughters to coach the Australian canoe slalom team ahead of the 2000 Games.As Myriam and Richard put the Australian team through their paces on the Nepean River, Jess and Noemie would head down after school and spend their time on the sidelines doing their homework and playing on the rocks while they waited for their parents to finish training. That is, until they were old enough to pick up a paddle themselves.“I think I was about 13 to 15 or 16 when it got the most intense, in that there was that expectation,” she says.

“My parents had been really good in the sport, so what was I going to be? Was I going to be good? Was I going to be average? Was I ever going to make it?”Now nearly 30, the answer to those questions couldn’t be more obvious. Whichever way you look at it, she has made it by winning 38 World Cup gold medals, nine World Championship titles, silver at London 2012, bronze Rio 2016 and gold and bronze in Tokyo.This year in Paris, Fox will be lining up at the starting gate for not one but three different events: kayak, canoe and kayak cross.The 2024 Games will