Rotorua’s Isaac Sanderson getting ready to take paddling skills to America

Isaac Sanderson is off to the 2023 ICF Canoe Freestyle World Championships in Columbus, Georgia in October. Photo / Andrew Warner

Rotorua’s Isaac Sanderson, 15, will be paddling up a storm as he heads to Columbus, Georgia in October to compete in the 2023 ICF Canoe Freestyle World Championships.

Isaac qualified through a dedicated selections event in Wanaka. He also recently competed in Nationals where he came first in Under 16 Slalom and Under 18 freestyle.

Canoe slalom has the aim to navigate through a course of hanging gates on river rapids in the fastest time possible.

Canoe freestyle is a discipline of whitewater kayaking or canoeing where people perform various technical moves on a river feature.

The Year 11 Rotorua Lakes High School student says finding out he had qualified for the world championships was a great feeling and he had been a bit surprised.

Isaac thinks competing in America will give him a greater understanding of how the sport runs, the chance to see what other people are doing in the sport, and to see how he matches up to other paddlers around the world.

He has been kayaking since he was 8 years old. His father was a raft guide and got him into the sport, he says.

Isaac trains three to four times a week. Since it is the winter season, he trains once with the Canoe Slalom BOP club and the rest is self-training.

Isaac thinks extreme kayaking is a great sport to be involved in because there are multiple paths you can go down, so you are not boxing yourself in.

He says it is great for learning many skills, as well as how to deal with fear, as it is a risk-taking sport.

“And there’s an awesome community of paddlers, especially in Rotorua.”

Isaac says each discipline within extreme kayaking has its own unique challenges. For river running it would definitely be fear - “It’s quite terrifying at times” - and for slalom the fitness needed is demanding.

Isaac says when it comes to taking on risks and facing your fears, it is important to visualise how your best run would go in your head.

He says another hard thing about the sport is the financial costs to fund going overseas to compete.

He says in the next couple of years he will be in the Under 18 age group for slalom, and his goal is to make the slalom U18 New Zealand team.