For Olympic gold medallist, world champion and all-around greatest paddler of all time, Jessica Fox, the standard end-of-year reflection and new year goal-setting looks a little different from the rest of us mere mortals.
A bronze and gold medal won in the Tokyo summer Games, followed by a gold medal in extreme slalom at the world championships in Slovakia, is a pretty successful 2021 — particularly during another pandemic-hit year.
But as champion athletes tend to do, exceeding expectations and raising the bar is par for the course.
"Being named the greatest of all time, it's a sort of title or accolade or recognition that you look [at] at the end of a career," Fox told Siren Sport.
"For me, I still feel like I've got more to achieve and that's also what excites me too.
"So, in a way, the gold was the dream, and now anything else is a bonus. I've achieved that main goal, but I can now chase other goals and chase different challenges on the water.
"I think it's almost a bit liberating, in a way. I can really paddle freely and know that I've already achieved what I set out to achieve when I was a little girl."
Written in the water
We all remember Fox's gold medal C1 race. That elusive prize not only solidified her place in paddling history as the greatest of all time, but claimed her the honour as the first woman to win gold in Olympic C1 canoe slalom, with the Tokyo Games the first time the women's event was included in the program.
But for Fox, 2021 is not all about these incredible successes. There's also a need to look back and a desire to share some of the challenges with a broader audience.
Something that has allowed Fox to do just that is creating a documentary to tell her tale, titled Jess Fox: Greatest to Gold.
"I think reflection is always super important to see how far you've come and what the challenges were on the way, and how can you improve for the next challenge or the next goal," Fox said.
"With the documentary, it was a bit of that process: looking back, recounting what happened, going through the Tokyo build-up and my whole story.
"It's so nice to now have this [documentary]. I've got journals that I write in or that I might sort of describe my build-up or whatever, but actually having a film recount that, that's pretty cool."
Fox laughs at how, in the documentary, her sister Noemie reveals that she had snuck a peek at some of those journals. Fox quips, "I need to get one of those little lock-up ones!"
And yet she admits that she was never shy in putting her Olympic goals out there.
"Everyone in my family knew what my goals were and what I was striving for," she said.
"But I think, what I write in a journal might just be how I'm coaching myself through the doubts or the questions. So that is a glimpse into my mind, essentially."
From devastation to destiny
While Fox's reflections of 2021 may not quite align with the journeys of others, the world's greatest paddler believes there's still a universality in her experiences which she was passionate to share.
One key moment when Fox allows fans that "glimpse into [her] mind" was when she re-watched the vision of her bronze medal K1 event in Tokyo.
We watch Jess as she watches her own race, revisiting and reckoning with the mistakes that cost her the gold.
"I'd never, never watched it, because I didn't really want to, and I was kind of put on the spot," Fox said.
"And it was good, in a way, that I was forced to watch it then and there because I probably wouldn't have done it otherwise.
"But I think it's also good to share those moments of vulnerability and the doubts and the questions because everyone goes through that, no matter what stage of your life you're at, whether it's in a professional or personal context.
"Winning the bronze medal but then coming back two days later … it took so much mental strength and energy to get to that point. I do share that now because I think it's not always a smooth journey and I don't always have 100 per cent confidence. I've always got to work through those moments, but I think a lot of people do."
This openness is one of Fox's greatest traits. She recalls people telling her that they knew she didn't look as confident in the K1 as she did in the C1 event, where she ultimately won gold, but has learned to deal with those expectations in her own ways.
"People always like to think that they know what's going on in your head. It's interesting because the way I see it is, I always look very similar before a race: I've always got the same sort of steely look and fierce eyes.
"And that's just how I am, it doesn't actually dictate how the race is going to go because that evolves throughout the race.
"It's more when, if you make a mistake, how do you react to that? So I think in the kayak, I made a mistake early on and that affected me because I got to the bottom and I made another mistake. And that cost me the gold medal."
Fox was also open in sharing her build-up to the C1 race itself, where she uncharacteristically threw up before the event. While some may have taken that as a sign of uncontrollable nerves, for Fox, it was more a result of the pressure placed on her after the K1 upset.
"I mean, it's just about staying in the present, and also controlling what you can control and not trying to get distracted," she said.
"Actually, at one point in the C1 race, I heard that I was up on the split time. And I knew that was a good thing, but I had to sort of stay neutral and not get carried away with that information. You sort of have to bring it back to [the present]: what's the next gate?"
Just around the river's bend
Being present was something Fox took with her beyond her Tokyo success.
While she failed to make the C1 and K1 finals for the first time at the world championships in Bratislava in September, she won gold in the extreme slalom instead: a new event that will be included in the Olympics in Paris 2024, which Fox now has her sights set on.
"I hadn't really done much of it [extreme slalom] because of the risk of injury in the lead-up to Tokyo, so it was really fun to be able to go for it a bit more after the Olympics and really have a crack," she said.
"And I think it's something that I'll definitely look to keep doing and keep chasing because it's been really enjoyable.
"Paris … I don't know if I'll be doing all three events. I think I'll have to manage the load because I've never done the three events for a whole season. So maybe it'll be that I won't be able to, we're sort of just going to be discovering that and we'll see."
Jess Fox: Greatest to Gold is streaming now.
ABC Sport is partnering with Siren Sport to elevate the coverage of Australian women in sport.
Kasey Symons is a Research Fellow in the Sport Innovation Research Group at Swinburne University in Melbourne and a co-founder of Siren: A Women in Sport Collective.
