Bio

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and lived there until I was 9. My family then immigrated to Auckland, New Zealand in 2007 and have been loving it here ever since.

I have been kayaking since 2014 and I initially got into the sport through surf life saving; encouraged by the successes of Lisa Carrington at the London Olympics. I learnt to paddle on Lake Pupuke, where she trains, and this was a huge motivating factor for me. Regularly watching her and gaining advice from a multiple Olympic Champion training on the same lake and using the same facilities at the Millennium Institute really made my childhood dream of becoming an Olympic champion seem much more realistic and attainable. I saw that she was a normal person and not a super human and this has allowed me to believe that anyone who has enough motivation, desire and hardwork within them can turn their dreams into a reality!

I decided that kayaking was going to be my sport and I took it up full time in 2015 in order to chase my goal of becoming an Olympic champion. After many months of hard work and determination, I finally got my first break and I was selected to race at the Junior World Championships in Belarus in 2016. This was an awesome, eye-opening experience that exposed me to just how tough the racing is at the top level. Since then, I decided to take my sport to the next level and in January of 2018, I moved to Cambridge to train with the New Zealand Open Men’s Team on Lake Karapiro. This was quite a big shift for me, having to move out of home and be fully independent for the first time in my life. However, the rewards have been almost instantaneous. At the 2018 National Championships, just 6 weeks after moving, I managed to win 5 medals for the North Shore Canoe Club, including 3 gold. Post this success, I was awarded North Shore Canoe Club’s performance of the year, crew of the year and male athlete of the year, which is a huge honor in just my second year of open men’s racing. I was then selected to race in the U23 men’s K4 crew at the U23 World Championships last year in Bulgaria, where we finished 13th in the world. In 2019 I backed this up and even improved on these results, winning 5 Oceania Titles in February at the Oceania Canoe Sprint Championships including the Elite Men’s K1 200m individual title (fastest male in Oceania). This earned me a spot in my first Elite team for my first ever Elite Men’s campaign. I was selected to race in the stroke (front) seat of the NZ Men’s K4 that was sent to the World Cups in May, where the K4 finished 17th and 23rd overall.