Jess Fox has forged a dazzling career by pushing herself out of her comfort zone, but she did wonder if she had gone too far as she was about to hit the catwalk at the L’Oréal Paris Walk for Worth runway show at Sydney’s Overseas Passenger Terminal recently.
“I was really nervous about it because I’m not a model,” the triple Olympic gold medallist says. “I’m not confident about that. I’m best in sneakers or even barefoot when I’m kayaking.
“But then I kind of had this realisation that it wasn’t about looking like a model and strutting on the runway. It was about being myself and kind of just embracing it and having fun.”
Fox, 30, has been in high demand since the Paris Olympics, where she confirmed her place as the greatest slalom canoe paddler in history by winning both the K1 and C1 gold medals, and shared one of the emotional high points of the Games with her younger sister Noémie, who completed the Fox family shutout of the women’s events by winning the kayak cross gold medal.
One of Australia’s most driven and dedicated athletes for the last 15 years, Fox would normally return to the World Cup circuit post-Olympics to scoop up a few more medals and titles before the season is done, but this year she has done things differently.
After what she describes as “a perfect Olympics” in Paris, she has paused to take advantage of some of the opportunities created by her sensational Games, and experience life as “a normal person” by going out to dinner with friends, eating whatever she likes on the menu and occasionally skipping a training session.
However, her calendar is still filled to the brim. Before the Olympics, she signed an agreement with the Nine Network, which segued into her reading the sports news on the Today show for a week last month and being part of Nine’s Melbourne Cup Carnival coverage this week.
The whirlwind began the day she landed in Sydney after the Olympics, with a photoshoot for Stellar magazine, before she attended the Logies, and then fronted up for her first breakfast shift on the Today show at 5.30am the next morning.
After the Games she signed on as an ambassador for L’Oréal Paris (hence the runway show) and she also has a series of corporate engagements to fulfil for sponsors including accounting firm Grant Thornton. The sports awards season is also kicking off, with Fox already having claimed Paddle Australia’s top award and the New South Wales Office of Sport’s female athlete of the year award, with the Australian Institute of Sport and Sport Australia Hall of Fame awards still to come. For a woman who prefers to wear sneakers, she’s doing a lot of frocking up.
“It’s a mixture of things that had been planned before Paris and then other opportunities that have come up since the Games that have been really exciting, very challenging, very different things like Channel Nine and the Today show. I was like, wow, OK, that’s exciting. Yes, let’s do it. Let’s throw myself in the deep end here and challenge myself.”
Four-times Olympian Fox won her first gold medal in Tokyo in 2021 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when there were far fewer commercial opportunities available, so she kept her head down and focused on her sport. This time she has put her head up and had a look around at what might be available for her post-sports career.
“Paris has been a huge shift, and I really noticed that in my life, for sure, compared to Tokyo,” she says. “And I’m also in a stage in my career where the post-career preparation is on my mind. And so I want to be doing these things, and dabbling in different areas that interest me, whether that’s in media or fashion or conferences and things like that. I’ve enjoyed the variety for sure.”
Which is not to say that Fox is thinking of retiring any time soon. She is committed to at least one more Olympics, in Los Angeles in 2028, and beyond that there is the carrot of a home Olympics in Brisbane in 2032, when she would be 38. That’s still within the medal age range for canoe slalom champions. Her mother and coach Myriam Jerusalmi-Fox won her only Olympic medal at 34, while 38-year-old Maialen Chourraut of Spain won a silver medal in Tokyo.
But the younger Fox expects to take her career year-by-year after Los Angeles.
“I haven’t ruled out [Brisbane], but I also see that it could be my opportunity to be part of the Olympics in a different way. I will be there. Whether or not it’s on the start line, I’ll be in Brisbane to enjoy a home Olympics in one way or another and be able to give back if I’m not competing.
“I’ve always said that for as long as I feel like the body is there and I’m committed and willing and motivated to train to the level that is required to perform at my best, and I still love it – because that’s a big one, to have the love – then I’ll keep going. But I think I’ve also always said that I want to go out on top. I don’t want to be hanging on and just doing it because it’s all I’ve ever known.”
Fox was elected to the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Commission for an eight-year term in Paris, so at the very least she will be in Brisbane in that capacity, and she will have to include monthly commission meetings in her schedule for the next two Olympiads.
She also doubts that even a home Games could live up to her extraordinary experience in Paris. She was one of Australia’s opening ceremony flag-bearers, won two individual gold medals and then watched in elation as Noémie clinched her own gold medal.
She’s still somewhat speechless in trying to describe what that experience meant to their family.
“We still can’t believe it sometimes, that we both did it, and it was just such a dream,’’ Fox says. “I feel like I need more words to be able to describe it, but I just don’t have them yet. But the feeling of those two weeks, what we lived, as a team, as sisters, as a family, it was truly such a unique and special experience that I don’t think anything will ever compare to that pride and joy that I felt watching her win and being able to share it together.”
The satisfaction is immense but the Foxes do not rest on their laurels.
Their home training course, Penrith Whitewater Stadium, west of Sydney, has been named as the host venue for next year’s world championships, and the whole family is invested in making the event a success for Australia.
Father and former world champion Richard Fox has been appointed head of the event organising committee, while Myriam, Jess and Noémie will focus their efforts on the performance side.
Fox says the lure of the home championships would propel her back into full training by the end of the year.
“I think a lot of athletes feel that sort of lull in motivation after such a big campaign or achieving the dream goal of an Olympic gold, so for me, that’s great, because it’s something exciting to work towards,” she says. “Having a home world champs is so rare, it’s once in a career, so I’m really looking forward to that.”
The world championships allows three paddlers to compete per nation in the individual events, and also includes a team event, so both sisters will be able to compete across the program – a luxury they don’t have at Olympic level.
“I want to be on my A game for that,” Fox says. On that stage she knows how to strut.
