After winning the women’s kayak title at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Australian star Jessica Fox now has five Olympic medals.  

So, who better to learn some tricks of the trade from than the Olympic champion? 

Here, Jess gives us five golden nuggets of advice for perfecting your technique:  

Adaptation: Use the water to help you, as opposed to fighting against it. Read the water and adapt. 

Timing: The stoppers can be different shapes. The timing of strokes is important and so is the positioning of your body. 

Technique 1: When I'm using the edges of the stopper to go, say from right to left, I use my whole body. I'll push on the footrest with my feet, I'll lock the boat with my knees and use my hips to guide the boat. 

Technique 2: My second slalom technique tip is about upstream gates, which means we go back up through the gates that are often behind a rock or an obstacle in flatter water. It's not in the middle of the current. We're converting that downstream speed into the eddy and using our core, using our rotation to turn the boat out.  

Technique 3: My final slalom technique tip is how to get out of an unpleasant situation. The white water is really powerful and sometimes it can be pretty violent if you lose your edge, if your paddle gets stuck, if your tail gets held by the water, it can lead to you capsizing. When that happens, we use a technique called the kayak roll where we get into position using our hips and the blade reaching for that flat water above we flick and we're able to roll back up.