ThePaddlerUK 14
F
irstly, where was your first paddle?
My first paddle, and the majority of the following eight
years of kayaking was on the River Tyne in Hexham,
North East England.
What and where was your first
competition?
Again on the River Tyne, this time downstream at
Prudhoe. It was a ‘Wavehopper Challenge’ event
designed to get kids into wildwater racing, and for me
at least it worked!
How does kayaking give you
satisfaction?
In so many ways! Be it nailing a difficult line, landing a
perfect boof or getting huge bounce on a wave, there
are so many adrenaline thrills. Being with good friends
on the water and all the new people you get to meet
in our amazing and welcoming community provides
me with a great social satisfaction. Also being a very
competitive person, I enjoy the physical challenges of
training and competing… and nothing beats the
satisfaction of winning a race you have spent
months/years preparing for.
Futaleufu, Chile. By Julio Baca
Only early doors but what is the
biggest accomplishment of your
career so far?
A silver medal at the 2009 European Championships
and team gold at the 2010 World Championships are
definitely the highlights of my river racing days. More
recently, getting the opportunity to compete in the
2014 Whitewater Grand Prix was another.
I started kayaking with the rest of my family at the ripe old age of 10 in a small town called
Hexham in north east England. Since then I’ve travelled all round the world to kayak and
spent a good number of years representing GBR in the discipline of wildwater racing.
Although racing took up most of my time as a teenager and got me a scholarship to Durham
University (where I studied Chemistry), during my time at uni I got back in to more
recreational river running and driven by adrenaline started pushing myself to run harder
rivers. After training to be a teacher in the UK, I landed the best job in the world as a maths
and science teacher at World Class Academy, the travelling kayak high school. I spent two
great years with the school and am now on a gap year of sorts travelling in South America,
kayaking and learning Spanish.