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Rebecca Archer
Welcome to The Remarkables – Grant Thornton’s podcast series dedicated to sharing extraordinary stories of individuals who are making significant contributions to their communities.
Today, we’re joined by Richard Fox, Head of the Host Organising Committee for the 2025 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships in Sydney, and Kim Crane, CEO of Paddle Australia.
Paddling is more than just a sport – it’s a way to connect with nature, build resilience and foster community. Whether it’s on a river, lake, or at competing on the world stage at the Olympics, the sport brings people together, encourages healthy lifestyles and opens doors for people of all backgrounds and abilities.
Soon, we’ll see World Championships underway in Penrith, bringing in athletes from around the world to compete in Australia.
Welcome, Richard and Kim!
Kim Crane
Good to be here.
Richard Fox
Thanks.
Kim Crane
Rebecca, thanks for having us.
Rebecca Archer
To kick off the episode, we're going to jump straight into a rapid-fire round. I'll ask you questions at random where you can respond with whatever comes to mind. Richard let's start with you. What are you reading or watching or listening to at the moment?
Richard Fox
I had to look at my bedside table and I have half a dozen books there. I wouldn't say I'm reading them, but I dip in and out of them and the one at the top was Surrounded by Idiots, which is about human behavioural types.
So, yeah, that's it, and I got some spy novels and, and things like that that I dip in and out of as well.
Rebecca Archer
What about you, Kim? Anything that you're listening to or reading at the moment or watching that's piqued your interest?
Kim Crane
I'm a big podcast listener, Rebecca. Yeah. So, one that I go to regularly is Cameron Schwab's, In The Arena. Cameron has an AFL background at the CEO level, and I really enjoy some of the guests that he has on his podcast just reflecting on sport and business. So real thought leadership context, and yeah, my downtime is also just spent listening to thought leadership as opposed to spy novels. I should get into the spy novels.
Richard Fox
I watch…I don't know if you know Slow Horses, which is a bit of a spoof. That's a favourite of mine. I'm waiting for the new series. I think it's out in a week or so.
Rebecca Archer
Those are some great recommendations. Thank you so much for sharing that. Now, if you can do a quick summary, perhaps of the most remarkable advice that you've received in life. It doesn't have to be professional; it can be personal, but just something that has stayed with you.
Richard Fox
I go back to when I was training as an athlete, and I think I was, you know, already at a decent level, and my coach at the time, Ken Langford, was, you know, a bit of a taskmaster. He said, now just think what you could do if you really tried, and I was thinking I was giving it everything and doing my best, and, you know, when you're sort of tired and vulnerable, I was thinking that's the most annoying piece of advice I've ever heard. You know, I felt like I was trying, but, you know, it just made me realise that you can always dig a little bit deeper. You know, that's where remarkable comes from.
Kim Crane
I've had some pretty remarkable mentors, Rebecca, in my career. I feel like I'm still today in the CEO role of Paddle Australia, living this advice on a daily basis at the moment, nd the advice specifically is get comfortable in the uncomfortable, and I think that's still something that I'm still learning.
Rebecca Archer
Very wise words. I like that. And just quick for both of you, Richard, we'll start with you. What's your go to coffee order?
Richard Fox
I'm ready for this one. Well, I have a few because I don't like to be just a one coffee drinker. The piccolo is the one I like, and I started drinking piccolos in Spain. So cortado is what they call it there, or in Catalonia, it's the taiat. And, you know, everyone does it a little bit differently. So, yeah, it's a nice one. You can have a. quick shot and a good fix. I've had one already today.
Kim Crane
And I'll jump in – probably just also gives you a bit of an indicator of my personal style, Rebecca. I'm a long black straight up in the morning. Go!
Rebecca Archer
All right, well, look, let's get into the nitty gritty of the episode. Talk to us about your career journeys. Kim, let's start with you.
Kim Crane
Professional athlete in the sense…hockey.
I was a member of the Australian women's hockey team, the Hockeyroos, for a period of time. Five years on tour with them, transitioned then – life after sport – into the coaching and training industry, doing leadership development with corporates before coming back into the sport system, and I think probably what served me really well for the role I'm holding at the moment is the fact that I've had a variety of different roles in the sport system predominantly up until this point in high performance, working with many of our organisations who are now our stakeholders – State Institutes of Sport, New South Wales Institute of Sport, Queensland Academy of Sport – before transitioning to the Australian Institute of Sport in various roles and then into sport itself international sporting organisations.
So was the National Performance Director at Surfing Australia before I moved to Paddle Australia in the national Performance Director role and then obviously have now transitioned to the CEO role of Padel Australia. So, I think the variety has actually really supported me to understand the system that we work within and it's a complex one, so it served me well.
Rebecca Archer
And Richard?
Richard Fox
I wouldn't say I started in elite sport. I started playing football, soccer, you know, school and club level for the mighty Harpenden Rovers in the Hertfordshire Division 3, and then I got into paddling. As a family we built plywood kit canoes and a few years of touring around canoe camping, learning to paddle on white water, running rapids and being excited by that and then being drawn away from playing football to competing in canoe slalom, and then I think – I was fortunate that I was, you know, quite fit and athletic and I was able to progress really very quickly and I enjoyed that, and then the next year found myself on the junior team competing for Great Britain in Europe and I really enjoyed the travel and the adventure and so on and I was on the world championship team at the age of 17 and a bit out of my depth but the inspirational moment for me was being on a team where, you know, one of the team became world champion and I was thinking, oh okay, well I'm not that far behind him so maybe there's something in this, and then I sort of followed the work ethic that you know, was there in front of me and you know, went on to win medals and world championships and things.
So it wasn't, I guess designed that way. It just happened, and I became addicted to, you know, training and competing and that journey then took me into coaching and a bit of a transition out of full-time athlete. I think I retired in ‘93 after winning the final fifth world championship, and I remember that moment somebody said to me, I thought you were going to quit. And I said, oh, that's a good idea. So that was it. I stopped on that day. I was due to compete the following day in a World cup, and I just thought, this is a good time to exit.
And then I did a little bit of freelance coaching. I supported Miriam, my wife, at the Atlanta Olympics and the build up towards that and then was offered a job in Australia after we'd sort of succeeded in the campaign to get the sport back in the Olympics for Sydney. So that was quite a sudden transition into being a full-time head coach here, leading into Sydney and then Athens.
So actually I look back on it – compared to Miriam – my coaching career was quite short. You know, in 2004, at the end of that year, I transitioned into the National Performance Director role and did that for 11 or so years, which was really, you know, rich and rewarding because it wasn't just the sport or the discipline that I'd grown up in. It was working in a completely, you know, still paddling, but a very different discipline and mindset and culture.
So, I, enjoyed that challenge and did that for quite some time and, and now I'm sort of free and out in the open and, you know, there's been a fair bit of – maybe not a fair bit – but some media work which I've enjoyed too along the way, and yeah, every four years when it comes up, I suppose, at the Olympics, as it seems to be.
Kim Crane
It's funny, Rebecca, that's where Richard and I actually first met was when he was the National Performance Director for Paddle Australia and I was working for the New South Wales Institute of Sport at the time, and I think right back to then, if Rich and I reflect on our professional relationship together, there was always a strong connection, even from that moment in time where this work that we do in sports – a real privilege – but when you do it with people that you really share a passion and values with, then you can have some pretty rich, meaningful relationships along the way, which is, at the end of the day, what it's all about.
Richard Fox
A couple of key moments in that journey stand out for me and the one was with sprint, I think it was – yeah, it was in Beijing, and, you know, there's sort of some defining moments and one of them was reminding the coach at the time that the athlete in question should get to the start pretty soon because the semi final was quite important. Kenny Wallace, as it was, he came third in his semi and made it into the final and then won a gold medal, and you sort of think that was it, that little reminder at that point, and he had to, he had to run, you know, jump in his kayak. He couldn't make it all the way around in the sort of the warm up zones. He had to run across, you know, the bit of land between the warmup lake and the competition course, just to make the start.
So, I always smile at that thinking that was a good call. And the other one was with Paracanoe, so being part of the introduction of the Para-discipline in Rio, and We've seen Curtis McGrath, but there were others go on to great success, but that was really rich and rewarding.
Rebecca Archer
And Kim, if I could ask you to tell us a little bit more about Paddle Australia and your time there. For people who might not have heard of the organisation, what does it do? What are the goals? What is it achieving?
Kim Crane
We're a national sporting organisation. What does that mean?
Well, we're the governing body, but we are also responsible for the development of the sport here in Australia. So, as the national federation for Paddle, I think what we need to be very clear on is how we are actually positioned in amongst our community, and in April of this year we relaunched a strategy called Paddle Forward 32.
Obviously, everybody in the system at the moment, most sports are talking about this true north that we're all heading towards, which is called Brisbane 32, and we launched this aspirational vision and strategy in April, and the purpose of the organisation quite purposefully actually shifted to being positioned as the home of paddle sports. So, we have 9 to 10 disciplines that sit underneath our governance remit.
So, there's a responsibility to develop and to connect and create a, a sense of belonging in amongst all of those different communities which at times can show up as independent subcultures. So, my job as the CEO is to lead with purpose and vision, and the purpose being that we're here basically to lead and serve, and the leadership and service from a purpose perspective is that we support, we inspire, we develop all paddlers, fostering a sense of belonging to our world, leading sport, yes, but also to this thing called a lifestyle.
So paddling is more than a sport; it's a way of life, and you know, when you're trying to, then as the CEO, come up with ways that we can better engage our community to create that sense of belonging, what I'm really proud of with the organisation is that it's got a very strong purpose and vision and we're trying to connect all of those different stakeholders within the community and our ecosystem.
So, our job is to ensure that they thrive and they're very dynamic, they're able to be agile and to move the system that we work within requires us to be agile and global trends do impact our sport. So, yeah, it's a pretty exciting purpose and vision and organisation. It's aspirational, but it's really changing, I think, some of the ways that we show up as a national sporting organisation that are moving away from some of the traditional sort of membership mindsets and looking at ways that we can better engage with our community.
So, it's a terrific opportunity to lead at the moment within Paddle Australia, and what I'm really proud of as well is that I've got really good people around me to be able to support moving towards that vision, and obviously Rich is one of those who, yeah, I would say is standing right beside us and we're working together on the same thing.
Rebecca Archer
And Kim, how do you actually measure the impact of Paddle Australia's programs both at the elite level and I guess in the broader community?
Kim Crane
Like any business, you have to look at how you measure from both a qualitative and a quantitative sort of perspective. So, things like at the moment to be able to really deliver on that aspiration. We're on a big journey at the moment, building both our capability and our capacity internally.
Something like the World Championships that we're hosting on behalf of the International Federation in the next couple of weeks, being able to host an event on an international scale, I would have said probably 12 months ago that we weren't necessarily fit for purpose internally from a capability and a capacity perspective to be able to do that, but what we've done is by just nature of the fact that that's a huge burning platform, we've been able to step up and really bring a whole range of different expertise into our organisation and think very differently about what's the legacy of this event and how can we actually build our capability and capacity beyond the event.
So – something we can talk about a little bit more – revenue for any CEO is always going to be there. It's the big curly one that we're all trying to solve is how do we rely less on government funding and more on commercial partnerships and platforms and programs to be able to sustain the organisation from a financial perspective.
Brand is obviously a big one, off the back of our most successful Olympic and Paralympic campaign in Paris, we've been really focusing on really capitalising on the brand and making sure that we can capitalise on the reach. So, we have a much greater reach now because everybody really did have eyeballs and hearts and minds connected to some of our athlete success that we had in Paris.
You’ve got to embrace innovation as well, that's another big one for us. Systems and processes, how we work are changing, technology is ever changing. So, you measure success quite specifically around that. There's no doubt we want to continue to be the most dominant paddling nation. So, we punch above our weight in the sense that we're – in many of our disciplines -predominantly a European based sport. There are some complexities about how we actually need to navigate maintaining that status as the most dominant nation across our disciplines.
Another measure of success is obviously, do we have the best talent? And that's not just athletes, which is always a challenge now in our Australian sports system, because Olympic sport has a challenge ahead of it because the professional codes, particularly in the rise of women's sport, you know, the AFLs and footballs of the world are obviously a pretty attractive proposition at the moment. So, it just forces us to be better to be able to have to retain our talent.
I'm always really mindful too now of the responsibility for our organisation to be a champion of sustainability for places and spaces particularly linked to our Australian waterways. So, oceans and waterways is a big one. So, loving the work that we're doing with our partners – Grant Thornton being one.
Improved wellbeing of our people, I think it's really changed the system. We used to focus on success was only how many medals we won, but now actually the health and wellbeing of our, not only our staff and athletes, but also our community. Do we have happy, healthy Australians who are enjoying the thrill and the joy of paddling? And that's I think, a really beautiful value proposition of our sport.
Every CEO of every national sporting organisation is always going to talk to you about sort of social and governance best practice and we have to be really on top of our game in that regard, but at the end of the day it's about also to paddle activity. Are we increasing the amount of paddlers in our community and are we selling the value proposition of our sport? So there's a long list, but there's a mix of qualitative and quantitative sort of measures of success that I think are really important for our organisation.
Rebecca Archer
Richard, the 2025 ICF World Championships are being held in Sydney in September. What does hosting this event mean for the local community and for paddling in Australia more broadly?
Richard Fox
I think locally we all remember Sydney 2000 – so there's that strong connection and I think there's a lot of pride in the community around the venue and the significance of that and what it's brought to the sport and the community. So you know, whitewater rafting, and then, of course, coming on the back of the Paris ‘24 Olympics and the success that we were fortunate to have there. There's a natural connection with us. It started in Sydney and here we are, 25 years later, celebrating the legacy. So, I think people understand that a lot of people still have never been to that venue, and so the World Championships is an opportunity to come and watch and see the best athletes in the world, but also just to enjoy that environment, which is a lot of what the event is about.
It's bringing people out into, you know, close to water, seeing, okay, yes, it's a World Championship competition, but we'll be running a paddle activation there at the site so people can see how to get started in the sport and how it can become, you know, a leisure and community activity.
Rebecca Archer
And do you think that hosting an event like this in Australia does help pave the way for successfully hosting the Brisbane Olympics in 2032?
Richard Fox
Yes, I do, and I think we're fortunate in being the first event, if you like, since Paris, of global significance – a World Championship, and there are others that follow quickly after us. There's triathlon and then there's beach volleyball. So, there's a lot of talk in the system about the green and gold runway and what can we do, and I think what we're trying to do is help sort of shape the narrative in the sense of experience, engagement, and Kim mentioned earlier sustainability as a key, important theme, and we've got others that are important to us – community is very strong. So how do we connect to communities, first nation communities in particular, and build those relationships locally and for the future?
And then in a sports sense, it's not about just getting people into, you know – canoe slalom is very niche, like a lot of sports in the Olympics, but into sport in general, into physical activity, and how can we demonstrate through hosting a World Championships, the social impact?
Often, we just talk about the economic impact. So, we're hosting the FIFA Women's World cup and it's massive, or, you know, the British and Irish Lions tour. You know, it's exploding the data records of the past, but, you know, in a sense, the Olympics should be much more about engagement and driving people into physical activity, not driving them, engaging with them, so that we can shift the dial on health and wellbeing essentially into the future. So paddling is, is part of that, and that's what we hope to bring through our World Championships is to say every stroke counts or every minute counts in terms of physical activity, in terms of improving the health of the nation.
Rebecca Archer
I wonder if you can share some of the most inspiring kind of stories you've both heard from the paddling community about the impact of Paddle Australia's programs and could be from the athletes, volunteers, maybe local clubs. Kim, can we start with you?
Kim Crane
Front of mind today, there's no greater athlete in our sport than - and I'm going to embarrass him – but Jess, obviously – Grant Thornton athlete ambassador and proud Paddle Australia athlete.
I think, you know, when you look at success, when you have an athlete like Jess who's now transcended our sport, not just because of her sporting achievements, but also to who she is as a person, there's no greater example. So, our High Performance Program's purpose is to support our Australian athletes to become the world's best paddlers and people, and the most two important words in that sentence is actually the ‘and people’ part for me. And.
And you've seen, you know, Jess make the announcement that she sadly has to withdraw from the World Championships due to surgery, but the way she does that authentically, you know, with grace, with character and articulates, you know, her emotions so beautifully, that's, I think, at the end of the day, what Australians now are inspired by as much as her greatest of all time sporting achievements.
So, she, for me, today is probably front of mind and yeah, really proud of the work that she's doing with Grant Thornton and also to our sport, leading in as an ambassador still for the World Championships, where now she's got an opportunity to engage very differently with the community, and I'm excited to actually see her have that experience as well.
Rebecca Archer
And of course, we should point out that Jess Fox is Richard Fox's daughter, our guest today, and her younger sister Noemie, also a gold medallist from the Paris Olympics.
So, you know, some real talent inside that family is a bit of an understatement, really. But, Richard, what about yourself? Have you got any stories that stand out? I guess, you know, the obvious ones would be within your own family, but just things that you've been told about the impact that paddling and Paddle Australia has had on people's lives.
Richard Fox
Well, thank you. Yeah, and I'd like to balance what Kim's just said about Jess with Noemie and what she was able to achieve in Paris, which was incredible, where, you know, she'd been a team member for some time, and she really seized that opportunity and I think, you know, exceeded hopes and expectations that she might have had, you know, leading into Paris. So that was remarkable.
I think that when I see paddle awards would be one occasion for this when you hear about other people's stories and what they've done. So, you know, they paddled around Australia. People do things like that, and when I first came to Australia, I met somebody called Terry Boland in Western Australia and he used to go off on these expeditions to the paddling in the Kimberleys and you know, solo and you think wow, like who does that? And you know, people that take up paddling later on in life and then they find their niche, and I think that's, you know, when I see those things, it's quite hard when you're a competitor to keep going as a, you know, recreational enthusiast and, and it's inspiring to see people that get up every day and go for a paddle because they just love the feel of water and, and I often think, you know, I wish I paddled more than I actually do at the moment because I live near the Nepean river and it's a beautiful place and I do laps at the Whitewater stadium when I can.
So, I get from, you know, looking at some of those, you know, lifetime recreational paddlers, whether that's on white water or the ocean or on rivers and then the other one I think that's most inspiring to me is, and I said it earlier on is the Para-athletes how 10 years ago we were just beginning with Para.
I mean people had been paddling for some time but it is a sort of, I suppose a recognised activity or discipline, and now you look at what the sport can bring to Para-athletes, it's amazing, and then when you see how they engage and train and develop and perform. So that's an inspirational piece for me.
Kim Crane
Another part there, Rebecca, like my transition from a career perspective essentially for the last 30 years surrounded about high performance. You don't often get an opportunity to engage as deeply with the volunteers when you're in coach-athlete mode.
So, I'm really looking forward to the World Championships and engaging with our volunteers for this event. We've got over 190 volunteers coming in from all over the country who also too have been this amazing opportunity to create connections and Networks through to Brisbane 32.
So, they are actually almost seeing a pathway for themselves as well by building their capability as volunteers and being able to offer that as a system, and these people are remarkable – absolutely remarkable. So, coming in from all over the country, I know that in the next couple of weeks what I can already see is that I'm going to be very, very proud of our volunteer workforce.
Rebecca Archer
I must say, from my own experience, I do love kayaking. It's something that I tried for the first time 17 odd years ago and absolutely fell in love with it. It is just such a great way to explore places when you're traveling and seeing the world and the place that you're in from such a different perspective on the water; I can understand why it resonates with people, and it becomes an addiction.
Richard Fox
The thing for us, I think, that we recognise more and more is how accessibility is so important, and, you know, when you think these days, you can, you know, if you're traveling, you stay in a hotel somewhere, you can step outside of the door and you can, you know, you find a jogging trail, that's fine, whereas you can find the water, and you think, oh, I'd love to go for a paddle, but it's actually quite hard.
You know, where's the equipment? How do I get to the water? How do I get on the water? What about, you know, how safe is it? So, finding places where it's easy to have equipment available; it's easy to get on the water. You know, they seem obvious things, but they're not obvious, and so those are the barriers that we need to break down. So, the idea of paddling hubs in urban environments is the future.
So whether it's free or whether there's a fee attached to it, but just making it easy to get on the water is critical for the future and having more people like you, Rebecca, feeling good about doing it.
Kim Crane
I think what you're touching on too, Rebecca, is that the water can offer… it meets you where you are.
So, there's the context of tranquillity in engaging with water. When we have many paddlers in our community who, you know, it might be about having an experience in the mangroves, you know, flora and fauna, you know, it's quite meditative, you know, first thing early in the morning, and just the stillness of the water.
So, there's the tranquillity context all the way through to just, like wild water, which is adrenaline, slalom, which is adrenaline, and there's an artistry about, you know, how you engage with the water. So, there's just so many different elements about how people connect with water that I think is actually, that's what makes it really special.
Rebecca Archer
Before we wrap up, just finally, what's on the horizon for Paddle Australia and beyond the World Championships this year?
Richard Fox
We’re close to the world champs now, and they're going to come and go like it's… there's a milestone there, there's a horizon line that we're approaching, and I think the thing is to keep going. So whatever programs and opportunities we put in place, you know, before and during the event, we want to continue.
So, activations will be a theme, and not just locally around Western Sydney or more broadly in Sydney, but nationally, too. So how do we bring and make the sports more accessible in those urban environments? And because I think that's important and more around this, you know, active, healthy lifestyle as opposed to competition, creating that bridge between the competition we all started somewhere.
I mean, I told my story. Canoe camping was where I began and maybe it's where I'll finish up in life, you know, going to these remote places. So, I think it's – to steal the phrases from Kim's strategy, but the, you know, that intersection, sport and lifestyle has never been more important to us. Like, so it's making competition, and the pursuit of excellence connected to the broader community. That's going to take us, you know, years to fully develop but we, we need to connect to the hundreds of thousands of people who paddle recreationally. People like yourselves, look much beyond the membership base that we have and much more towards the broader population, new members, but also just existing paddlers, and bring them even more enjoyment and more enjoyment and opportunity.
Kim Crane
So, there's growth in that, right? I mean, Richard's articulated that so beautifully and summarised in one word, that's growth for our organisation. So that's what's next after the World Championships. Continued growth and knowing, you know, where we fit in this, in the system, I think.
We're not trying to be professional codes. I think we've got a really unique value proposition, and we intrinsically know who we are as paddlers. So, it's not trying to be anything that we, you know, we're not. It's been really authentic with that, and I think the growth will come from exactly what Richard said, it’s just really anchoring this repositioning between.
We stand at the intersection of sport and lifestyle, as is articulated, and what I've really loved about the way we've engaged with new partners like Grant Thornton for the World Championships is it's allowed us to get very clear about who are the people that we love, what are the places that we love, and from a performance perspective, where are we aligned in terms of our strategic objectives. So, exploring that further and I think cementing some of these relationships is super exciting for paddle Australia. We're on the tip of an iceberg.
Rebecca Archer
If you liked this podcast and want to hear more incredible stories, be sure to follow and subscribe to The Remarkables podcast by Grant Thornton Australia on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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I’m Rebecca Archer – thank you for listening.
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