A lot of people ask me what changes after winning an Olympic Gold medal. It’s easy to point to the glamorous event invites, thoughtful gifts from dream brands, or the new level of recognition. Life has changed, but the real shift has been internal and has come from understanding my own potential in a way I never had before.
A hereditary love for sport
I was born into a family of kayaking royalty. My parents, Olympians and World Champions. My older sister, Jess, had already become World Champion and won an Olympic silver by the time I made my first junior team. I naively assumed success would come easily to me, and then I took my first international start. I finished 11th at my first Jnr Worlds, just one spot shy of qualifying for the Youth Olympic Games, a race I would watch a lot of my paddling friends go to.
The shadow of Jess, and Noémie Fox’s struggle for identity
In sport, comparison is inevitable, but when you're the younger sibling chasing the same dream, it's constant. “So, you're the only one who hasn’t been to the Olympics yet?” is something that would come up quite naturally, always in good faith, but always leaving me clouded with the same thought: “How come I just don’t get it?”.
Canoe Slalom is about precision and nailing the perfect line, without penalties and as fast as possible. This is what I struggled with the most in my late teens and early twenties. I would take the start line, thinking to myself, is this finally the race where I don’t make a mistake.
Everyone in my family knew how hard growing up in the shadow was for me. My parents had both gone to the Olympics, and Jess was the best in the world. I often wondered whether it was worth continuing in a sport where I didn’t seem to have the natural talent others did or even the results to show for all the effort. I was juggling full-time uni, a casual job and sport, experiencing a lot of self-doubt, low confidence and a lot of body image-related issues that so many young female athletes silently navigate. My mum would often remind me, “There’s more to life than the Olympics. It’s not the only definition of success.”
The mental journey for Noémie Fox’s gold medal
And so, I poured myself into other passions, as a way to avoid the full sting of disappointment if the sport didn’t work out, but also to find out who I was outside of it. I wanted to see if I could be successful elsewhere. Shortly after Tokyo, an extra global quota opened up for the Paris Olympics in Kayak Cross, a discipline I had fallen in love with. In Kayak Cross, there’s more room for error; it embraces the mess. It’s less about perfection and execution, more about adaptation and responding. You have to bring your full presence, react to the moment, and commit to the chase - that’s what made it feel so natural for me.
For the first time, I fully committed mentally, physically, and emotionally, giving everything to the dream. I worked alongside my sports psychologist to reframe my mindset around failure. We worked on confidence building to understand that failure wouldn’t be missing the one quota available in a global qualifier; failure would be never taking the shot and committing to that childhood dream that still ran so deep.
Qualifying for Paris
Qualifying for Paris in the global qualifier race and somewhat defying the odds still feels like one of my proudest achievements because it was such a personal growth journey and a huge opportunity to prove to myself what I was capable of achieving if I put my mind to it. Joining Jess on that Olympic team and taking Paris together was the biggest dream come true. I have never felt such an “I’m made for this moment” like in Paris. I soaked up every piece of magic the Olympic Games could offer, from the merch, the opportunities, the opening ceremony, the press conferences, and the races of Jess.
There were 8 days of Canoe Slalom races as a fan, cheering and living Jess’ races as a sister, before taking the start line fresh and ready for my moment. There was expectation and pressure, but I didn’t feel the need to live up to a certain level, prove myself or match Jess’ gold performance. I didn’t let that one opportunity I fought so hard for slip away and be debilitated by fear, doubt or performance anxiety, and that’s what I’m most proud of.
What’s next for Noémie Fox?
I continue to reflect on Paris, the preparation, the mental strength, resilience, and grit it took to arrive physically and mentally ready to perform on that one day in a four-year cycle and the self-belief that was built in the process. One of my main reflections is that excellence is not given; even if the other three members of your family embody it, it has to be earned, and you have to put in the work to keep on improving, deeply believing that eventually you will be rewarded! Now, as I prepare for a home World Championships in Sydney this September, it’s all new to be labelled as a favourite and handling the expectations that come from that but the mind like any muscle, needs constant training and reinforcement and so some days I still have to remind myself and go back to pen on paper to build back up the confidence, positive reinforcement and remind myself that was all me!
