{"id":71551,"date":"2019-07-26T22:42:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T05:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/?p=71551"},"modified":"2019-08-07T17:32:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T00:32:38","slug":"nouria-newman-is-redefining-whitewater-kayaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/paddle\/nouria-newman-is-redefining-whitewater-kayaking","title":{"rendered":"Nouria Newman Is Redefining Whitewater Kayaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nouria Newman is a student of fear.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 27-year-old Frenchwoman is widely viewed as one of the best kayakers on the planet. She\u2019s paddled some of the world\u2019s most vicious rapids and waterfalls, won whitewater and slalom championships, and explored first descents on remote rivers. She completed her master\u2019s thesis on how fear is socially constructed, and in a sport dominated by men, she\u2019s broken down barriers for women in competitions and by advocating for equality. She\u2019s most at peace in Class V whitewater.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s real life she finds terrifying.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last spring, the North Fork Championship (NFC), known as the most extreme kayak competition in the world, announced its first-ever women\u2019s division, thanks in large part to Newman\u2019s advocacy. But in June, the famed paddler was forced to skip the historic event in Crouch, Idaho. After submitting to an in-depth visa application process, Newman was denied a visa by the U.S. Embassy in Paris, with officials stating she lacked a legitimate profession or apparent stability in France. It threw her entire world into chaos, not only leaving the respected athlete in danger of losing sponsorships and income from U.S. prize money, but also delegitimizing her entire way of life, in spite of her massive contributions to the sport.<\/p>\n

Newman started paddling because her parents forbade it. When she was five years old in Tignes, France, she laid eyes on a kayak for the first time and announced that she would learn to use it. \u201cThey told me no, because I didn\u2019t know how to swim,\u201d she recalled. \u201cSo I asked them to take me to swimming lessons and they forgot about my request until I came back with a swimming degree. Then they had to take me to the kayak club.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t start out as fearless. She wasn\u2019t immediately taught the roll that lets paddlers recover from a flip. Without a roll, when a paddler flips upside down, they have to pull the spray skirt, exit the kayak, and swim to safety. The swim through rapids can be terrifying, from strong currents, standing waves and recirculating holes that hold onto human bodies, to hazards like boulders and logjams.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

Newman poses after paddling Washington state’s Little White Salmon River on July 8, 2018. (Photo Credit: Erik Boomer)<\/p><\/div>\n

It left Newman afraid of whitewater\u2014but as one of the few girls in her kayak club, she said, she wasn\u2019t expected to push through fear to try things. That doesn\u2019t mean she got off easier, though. \u201cSometimes I was so scared I would pee in my boat. I had a terrible coach and he would say it out loud in front of everyone, publicly shaming me: \u2018You peed in your kayak.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When she was eight years old, a family friend taught her how to roll on a vacation in Costa Rica. No longer scared to flip in whitewater because she could right herself, she started surpassing the other kids in the club, even the coach. \u201cI went from being the scared little girl to being less scared than the boys,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it had nothing to do with gender. It was confidence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Newman started young on the slalom race circuit, quickly making a name for herself paddling around the world. That\u2019s where she met Canadian paddler Katrina Van Wijk. \u201cI distinctly remember that she always came at it with a kind of confidence I wasn\u2019t used to in other female paddlers,\u201d\u00a0Van Wijk said. Van Wijk would go on to make history in 2014 as the first woman to race in the finals of the NFC on the Class V+ Jacob\u2019s Ladder rapid; Newman followed in 2015 as the only woman in a field of 19 men.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Newman began paddling more technical water, she found herself fielding the same sentiment over and over: <\/span>How amazing that you\u2019re a girl and you\u2019re not afraid<\/span><\/i>. She began thinking that perhaps this concept that women are more fearful than men was a social construct that was reinforced beginning at a young age. The idea intrigued her so much that she completed her master\u2019s thesis in sociology on the subject at university in Toulouse in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

Newman conducted research on the White Salmon River in Washington state, carrying a recorder as she paddled and paused to ask every female kayaker she encountered for an interview. She paired their responses with research from the same Tignes kayak club she\u2019d attended, now comprised of a new generation of kids and a different coach than the one she\u2019d had in her early days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, when coaching a group of small boys and girls, if girls are hesitant, they\u2019re not pushed the same way boys are,\u201d she says, speaking from a combination of her own experience and findings from her research. \u201cBut that slalom coach treated boys and girls the same way, and the girls seemed just fearless,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that they weren\u2019t scared; they just weren\u2019t <\/span>conditioned <\/span><\/i>to be scared and back down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

Nouria Newman paddles off Spirit Falls on Washington States Little White Salmon River on July 8, 2018. (Photo Credit: Erik Boomer)<\/p><\/div>\n

While Newman\u2019s slalom racing career took off during her teens and early twenties, she also exploded onto the whitewater scene, demonstrating a breadth of skills that many paddlers lack. In 2016, she got the call from Adidas Sickline Extreme Kayak World Championship, an invitation-only race held on the <\/span>Wellerbr\u00fccke rapid in the Austrian mountain town of Oetz<\/span>. Newman refused on the grounds that the famous race didn\u2019t have a category for women. The organizers claimed that there weren\u2019t enough women to paddle it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOpen a women\u2019s category and there will be,\u201d Newman replied.<\/span><\/p>\n

The following year, Adidas Sickline opened its first female division. After more prodding from Newman, who observed that the paddlers who were men received prize money while the women didn\u2019t, and that the women weren\u2019t guaranteed to race the same finals course as the men, Sickline committed: In 2017, the women\u2019s division received equal pay, equal media broadcasting, and the same race course. Newman won the women\u2019s world championship, and her run stacked up more views than the run by the winning man.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her Sickline win wasn\u2019t just historic; it was validating. Kayaking is mainly a U.S. sport dominated by men; as a French woman, Newman had fought her whole kayaking career to prove herself. After Sickline, that sentiment of Wow, you\u2019re a female kayaker and you\u2019re not afraid<\/em>, morphed into You\u2019ve got balls<\/em>. For Newman, this wasn\u2019t exactly a compliment; it illustrated the limbo so many athletes who are women find themselves in. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for women in outdoor sports to find their place,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re either not capable, or if you are capable, you\u2019re associated with masculinity, even if it\u2019s not direct.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2018, Adidas pulled its sponsorship and Sickline fell by the wayside, leaving a void in the extreme whitewater scene. That same year, Newman\u2019s slalom times began to fall, due in part to injuries from repeated shoulder dislocations and a full surgery. Eventually, the French Canoe Kayak Federation pulled their financial support of her racing. \u201cTo basically hear, \u2018We\u2019re kicking you out because you\u2019re slow and old\u2019\u2014that was hard,\u201d she said. \u201cOne day you wake up in the morning and know you\u2019re going to train two to three times per day to compete. The next day you don\u2019t know what to do. I\u2019d just finished my studies, I\u2019d lost my part-time job, and I\u2019d been kicked out of the training center, so I lost access to the gym, the physio, my coach, my training group.\u201d Most athletes hope to end their racing careers on a high, perhaps with a medal. But Newman was forced to end her slalom racing career on her worst season yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

Newman performs in the lower Indus river in the Himalayas, India on August 19, 2018. Editor\u2019s Note: This image was not taken on Nouria Newman\u2019s solo trip itself; but was re-created in the same region in the following days. (Photo Credit: Ali Bhamal)<\/p><\/div>\n

Shortly after, in August 2018,<\/span> she flew to India to compete in the whitewater Malabar River Fest, and opted to stay a bit longer to go north and solo kayak the famously beautiful Zanskar as it flows into the great Indus. She needed the solitude, and she wanted to think.<\/span><\/p>\n

Expedition kayaking, usually comprised of a multiday trip, often on remote rivers and sometimes involving first descents, is a different beast than the well-catalogued whitewater that most paddlers make the rounds on, explains pro kayaker Ben Stookesberry, who\u2019s paddled with Newman on numerous first descents in South America. \u201cThere\u2019s this big beautiful blank slate where you can write your own story without skipping the details, and that fits Nouria\u2014her style of paddling is about seeing the river for itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Newman\u2019s approach to fear, Stookeberry sums it up like this: He watched her rappel down from a cliff into the base of the falls of the Salto Engano, a first descent in Argentina that he, Newman and Erik Boomer were considering. She stuck her head directly into the thunderous plunge, wanting to immerse herself in the worst, most violent part of the waterfall to see if it was something she wanted to attempt. \u201cThen she was the first one of us to run it. She can stay with some of those dangers and use that as a motivation to paddle toward the light.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to widespread flooding, the rivers in India were enormous. On day two of paddling alone, coming up fast on a big whitewater section, Newman missed a move and got pinned on top of a siphon, a deadly river feature where water flows beneath boulders, potentially jamming other objects that try to pass through. Stabilizing herself and staying calm as the water roared around her, she began to pull her safety gear from her PFD in hopes of levering herself out of her boat and onto the rock. But she tipped, and was sucked out of her boat straight into the siphon and under a rock. \u201cI thought, <\/span>This is it<\/span><\/i>. At this point I wasn\u2019t scared. I was really calm. I just thought, <\/span>You\u2019re such [an] idiot if you die like this<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The hydraulics, her own efforts, and no small amount of luck finally shot her back to the surface. She swam through the rapid to chase down her kayak\u2014she would have been stranded without it in the high-walled remote canyon. She made it to a small beach, towing her heavy, water-laden kayak before the next set of rapids, cold and exhausted. Ribs bruised, scared and demoralized, she faced several more days of paddling alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt least on the rapids you can\u2019t think. But on all the flatwater, everything just comes out. The hardest of all was to be with the real source of my own fear on the rest of that river and realize \u2026 what if I\u2019m just going away on trips to escape, because I can\u2019t face that I\u2019m a failure?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

Nouria Newman seen at the Nubra Valley in the Himalayas, India on August 20, 2018. (Photo Credit: Ali Bhamal)<\/p><\/div>\n

Just months after Newman safely made it home to France, in January, the NFC announced it was stepping into the void left by Sickline to become the world’s extreme whitewater championship. And they announced their first-ever women\u2019s division, with equal pay for winners. The paddling community predicted Newman would dominate.<\/span><\/p>\n

But less than a month before NFC, she was denied her visa. She saw her kayaking career flash before her eyes. The biggest races are held in the States, and those races represent prize money (a primary source of income for Newman) and a chance to deliver on sponsor expectations like paddling the NFC\u2019s inaugural women\u2019s category. But the deeper cut was personal: In her visa interview, the immigration officer told her to come back when she had a \u201cproper job\u201d and could demonstrate more stability.<\/span><\/p>\n

She wanted to scream at him. She\u2019d fought her whole life to legitimize professional whitewater kayaking. And now she was told it \u201cdidn\u2019t fit the boxes.\u201d \u201cWhat scares me is that I have to conform to social pressure: get a proper job, buy a house and a car, get married, not live with my mom at 27 years old,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019m terrified to get involved in a relationship, to think about settling down. I\u2019m not good at \u2018proper life.\u2019 Kayaking has always been a way to escape from this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In June, 18 women made history paddling the NFC\u2019s first women\u2019s division, and Norwegian Marriann Saether took first. There\u2019s no way to know how Newman would have placed, but that doesn\u2019t stop some of the long-time paddlers from speculating. \u201cI do think that Nouria would have destroyed that category, and she would have been able to compete with the men,\u201d said Stookesberry. But the opportunity to prove it has passed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Newman isn\u2019t sure what\u2019s next. She knows that kayaking is the thing that makes her happiest, and that at its heart, it\u2019s about so much more than escaping the fear of \u201creal\u201d life. It\u2019s about the feel of being on the river and moving through beautiful places. It\u2019s about the people she paddles with. It\u2019s about exploring what\u2019s around the next corner, that glorious unknown where she can make her own decisions on a stretch of water.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter what the future holds, her impact as a professional kayaker is already undeniable. <\/span>\u201c<\/b>As a woman, as a person, it doesn\u2019t even matter the gender, she\u2019s pushing the limits of kayaking, and it has this crazy trickle effect,\u201d said Van Wijk. \u201cShe\u2019s inspired so many new kayakers. Even if she\u2019s not the reason they kayak, she might be the reason they look at things a little differently, or have the ability to dream bigger. She\u2019s allowed little girls to have that dream of being on the leading edge of the sport one day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nouria Newman is a student of fear. The 27-year-old Frenchwoman is widely viewed as one of the best kayakers on the planet. She\u2019s paddled some of the world\u2019s most vicious rapids and waterfalls, won whitewater and slalom championships, and explored first descents on remote rivers. She completed her master\u2019s thesis on how fear is socially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":71572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[726,727,349],"internal-tag":[],"class_list":["post-71551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paddle","tag-force-of-nature","tag-latest-posts","tag-paddling"],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/rei.com\/blog\/paddle\/nouria-newman-is-redefining-whitewater-kayaking","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Nouria Newman Is Redefining Whitewater Kayaking","url":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/paddle\/nouria-newman-is-redefining-whitewater-kayaking","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/paddle\/nouria-newman-is-redefining-whitewater-kayaking"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/07\/Nouria-Newman_Graeme-Murray-Red-Bull-Content-Pool.gif?resize=150%2C150","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/07\/Nouria-Newman_Graeme-Murray-Red-Bull-Content-Pool.gif?fit=2000%2C1333"},"articleSection":"Paddle","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jessica Bernhard"}],"creator":["Jessica Bernhard"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Uncommon Path \u2013 An REI Co-op Publication","logo":""},"keywords":["force of nature","latest posts","paddling"],"dateCreated":"2019-07-27T05:42:45Z","datePublished":"2019-07-27T05:42:45Z","dateModified":"2019-08-08T00:32:38Z"},"rendered":"