Three daredevil kids of the Kaituna - sister and brother River and Zack Mutton and their childhood neighbour George Snook - have all won crowns at the extreme kayaking world champs in Italy.
As young kids, River and Zack Mutton would hang out with George Snook, the boy next door, from dawn till well after dusk.
They’d play tag and football on the old tennis court bordering their family properties that sit above the Ōkere Falls, east of Rotorua. Or take their torches and play spotlight in the bush. Snook became their neighbour when he was five, but he grew more and more into a kid brother.
As they got older, they’d go to the bottom of the Muttons’ garden every morning at 6am, slip their kayaks into the Kaituna River, and race each other; always running late to catch the school bus.
Soon the adventurous trio were paddling through whitewater rapids and over waterfalls – even when Rivey, as she’s best known, was terrified of the drops.
They each dreamed of one day standing on a podium as the best paddlers in the world. And now that’s a reality - for all three.
Zack Mutton, the eldest of the trio at 23, has just been crowned the men’s extreme kayak world champion after mastering the intimidating rapids of the Passer River in Italy’s South Tyrol last month.
Snook, three years younger, retained his title as the 'vice world champion' - or second in the world - after dipping out to his lifelong friend by 0.12s.
Not to be outdone, Rivey – who sits in between them in age - was also vice world champ (second) for the second year running in the women’s K1 event.
The world champs doubled as the annual King and Queen of the Alps event, so as well as some very sharp medals (“I almost impaled myself on mine at the after-party”, says Rivey), the paddling trio were all presented with crowns.
“If we were those kids again, playing in our backyards, it would be pretty cool to see how we all did this together,” Rivey, 21, says.
“As a kid I was terrified of kayaking. I told Dad I would never paddle the little waterfall at home, yet at the same time I always knew I’d end up doing it.”
“I feel like as a kid I was more focused on finding a good stick to make a spear,” Snook, now 20, chips in. “But I definitely think we’re lucky where we grew up.”
Now the trio are looking to the next stages of their lives – to become a journalist, a pilot and a mechanic.
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The paddlers had some pretty impressive role models growing up on the whitewater mecca of the Kaituna.
Another Ōkere Falls neighbour, Sam Sutton, won four world extreme kayak championships, his last in 2017. And the Muttons’ dad, Kenny, was the European freestyle kayak champion in 2000 and won a bronze medal at the world freestyle championships.
Kenny Mutton is famous for his daily 6.30am kayak runs down the Kaituna River, challenging all-comers.
“I definitely think that’s where we get our advantage from - going for morning race laps down the river with Dad,” says Rivey, who was also a national slalom ski champion in her teens.
Mutton and Sutton are also in business together, designing performance kayaks under the brand Waka. All three paddlers were in Waka kayaks at the world champs.
“Having Kenny around making boats, and knowing all the cool stuff he did about kayaking, made it one of the most perfect places to grow up,” Snook says.
“Both my parents paddled as well, so I was paddling a little bit before we moved into the house right next door. Zack and Rivey were older and better than me, so I was always chasing them. They motivated me and made me more invested in kayaking.”
Paddling wasn’t such a serious pursuit till the kids reached intermediate school.
“Canoe Slalom Bay of Plenty would run weekly club sessions on the river down by our house. We were having fun twice a week after school. We’d hang out afterwards and play tag in our kayaks, and run little rapids in our slalom boats and think we were so cool,” Rivey says.
By the time they reached high school, they were paddling every day before and after school, for as long as daylight allowed. “In winter it sucked because we’d get off the bus and it would already be dark and cold,” says Snook.
“All that time on the water probably makes us who we. At home, it’s so easy to get on the water – we walk two minutes - where in some countries, people drive an hour to get to a river.”
The trio became adept at canoe slalom racing, winning national age-group titles and representing New Zealand in both junior and later senior world championships and World Cup races.
While Snook, who competed at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, was inspired by Zack Mutton’s dedication to the sport, Rivey says the sibling relationship on the water was “a little less friendly”.
“There was a lot of competitiveness. But I always thought Zack was really good, and I definitely wanted to be like him,” she says.
Rivey was never far behind. After Zack finished eighth in the K1 at the 2017 world junior canoe slalom championships (equalling New Zealand’s best result), she won bronze at the following year’s junior worlds in the girls’ extreme slalom.
But no one could have been prouder of Zack’s world title and King of the Alps crown than his two childhood playmates.
“He’s a great paddler, but he’s been a little bit unlucky, so it’s cool for him to finally get a top result,” says his sister, who watched the men’s final run from the finishline.
“I was really stoked he laid down a sick run; he’d been looking for it a long time,” adds Snook. “In some ways you’re like, damn he caught me. But it’s way cooler than if it was a random person.
“I owe a lot to him for my paddling today.”
Snook and Rivey, who are now a couple, chatted to LockerRoom from Norway, where they headed after the world champs to paddle some of the world’s best whitewater rivers for fun.
They were near Voss, where they both finished runners-up in last year’s extreme world champs. This year’s worlds in Italy presented a more technical challenge after the Alps had less snow over the past winter.
“The river needed a different paddling style – it was a lot shallower with a lot of room for mistakes. It made it harder to just charge, but it was still good fun,” says Rivey, who finished a close second to French rival Nouria Newman.”
It also meant the course was longer, but it still took only one-and-a-half minutes for the fastest paddlers in the world to navigate their way through the churning whitewater.
“It came down to whoever could hit the most lines while keeping the boat up to speed,” Snook says. “Last year, we all kind of knew what to do – it came down to who could do it the fastest. This time we were all trying to come up with the best option, and then every couple of metres, there was another line you had to hit. I really enjoyed it.”
While they may be at the daredevil end of the sport, the extreme kayakers are also wise to the risks.
“Some of it is pretty scary. But you have the option whether to scare yourself or not,” Rivey says. “You have to be smart. If you can’t eliminate the risk, you don’t have to do it.”
Snook agrees it’s a dangerous sport. “You’re out there to have fun, not to risk your life every day, so we make sure we’re equipped with the right gear and the knowledge to eliminate life-threatening risk.”
Next year’s Paris Olympics will introduce extreme slalom to the two traditional canoe slalom events. It’s fast and furious - paddlers tussling with each other in identical plastic creek boats in a straight knockout race.
The Muttons and Snook were all named in the New Zealand teams to contest the senior and U23 world canoe slalom championships this year, but staying on in Europe for another two months ended up being too expensive.
Snook returned home to complete the hands-on part of his mechanics training, but he also wants to get back into serious slalom training and race again this summer. “We have our Olympic selection trials early next year, which I’ll race in. It’s hard to know how competitive I’ll be up against the likes of Finn Butcher and [Olympian] Callum Gilbert,” he says.
Rivey is keeping the Olympics in the back of her mind (she knows she'd be up against four-time Olympian Luuka Jones for a spot), but for now she loves the travelling lifestyle and fun competition that extreme kayaking brings. She started a communications degree, specialising in journalism through Massey University. “It would be cool to write for adventure magazines,” she says.
A former national U14 and U16 slalom skier, she worked on Treble Cone and Cardrona as a ski instructor last winter. She also taught rookie Snook how to ski: “Now he can do a backflip and I can’t, which is really annoying.”
Zack is staying on in Norway to spend a few months at a flight school in his aim to become a pilot.
And the Ōkere Falls continue to turn out star kayakers.
Not far down the river from the Muttons and the Snooks live brother and sister Michel and Pipi Uhl, who’ve both been selected in the New Zealand team for the U23 canoe slalom world champs in Poland next month.
The dynasty continues.
