Richard Fox put the whole ridiculous situation in perspective, admitting after his youngest daughter won gold in the kayak cross on Monday, that he’s now the only member of the family not to have an Olympic medal.
He was close too, finishing fourth in the kayak single for Great Britain in Barcelona in 1992, 33 hundredths of a second behind the bronze medallist. His wife, Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, won a bronze for France in the same event at Atlanta in 1996.
But in a barely believable week, his daughters Noémie and Jess have both now eclipsed their parents achievements. Jess had long since done so as a medallist at four Olympics, and now has three individual golds, as many as any Australian.
But Monday’s triumph by Noémie was something else. After she won the same heat that eliminated Jess the previous day, Myriam joked if she had to choose one of her two daughters to go through, it would be her youngest. “I would kick Jess out and I would leave Noémie in that event for her to shine, for her to do the race of her life, and she did.”
While they project as wholly harmonious siblings, Noémie admitted it’s not always that way. “Some things will make you angry, like when she told me my first draw [this week],” Noémie said. “She’s like, ‘oh, you got a good heat’ and it was the hardest of the heats. I wanted to slap her.”
Noémie was born in Marseille three years after Jess, and has been grinding in the sport for years. Until 2024, her proudest individual achievement was a bronze in the canoe single at the under-23 world championships. Then she won silver in the kayak cross in June at the Canoe Slalom World Cup in Prague, securing a start at the Paris Games.
This discipline is a new Olympic event in 2024 that resembles Super Mario Kart on rapids, and crucially had a field that could include two entrants from the same country. Noémie’s performance meant Australia, and the Fox family, would have a second Olympic place.
After she beat Jess on Sunday, Noémie just kept on winning. In the quarter-final, she out-paddled the rest of the field for an easy victory. In the semi-final, she reached the first gate in last place, but within seconds she had taken the lead, rolling and then going left through the crucial upstream gate while the others went right. And in the final, she went the opposite way at the roll-point, swinging around the upstream gate in a flash to secure a lead she would not relinquish.
Afterwards, all anyone could say is how much she deserved it. How courageous it was to stay with the sport. How she had put in the hard work until now but with little reward.
Richard Fox said it was “amazing” that she stuck it out, given how Jess’s dominance makes securing a place at the Olympics almost impossible. “As long as Jess is around, [the reality for Noémie is] ‘there’s no place for me’. That’s been the hardest thing, but the way she’s reframed it is a testament to her.”
The one image to encapsulate that reframing was when Jess jumped into the water at the end of the course to celebrate Noémie’s victory. Drenched from head to toe, tears in her eyes, was history’s greatest paddler.
“There’ll always be that shadow,” Noémie said after the final. “She’s the greatest of all time in our sport and that’s something, when I was starting out, that was really hard to deal with. Because I always thought that I didn’t get the ingredients to do well in this sport.”
“You’d have extended family that would be like, ‘oh, you do it too’. But watching her, it’s just such a privilege and inspiration, and it really fuelled me. And when someone like that really believes in you and tells you you’ve got to go and get it, that’s what you do.”
Noémie now casts her own shadow. Myriam wisely reminded those present that for all Jess’s achievements, the younger sister will be remembered as the first Olympic gold medallist in the kayak cross discipline. “We always think, ‘oh, Jess this, Jess that’, but in the end, Noémie did write the story, her own story, and the history in our sport.”
On Monday – like it has for more than a week now – the Olympic spotlight shone on the Fox family, without question the Australian story of the Games. Even a boyfriend, Noémie’s coach and partner Titouan Dupras, was thrust in front of the microphones (he said she showed “what she was capable of”).
And while the whole family could enjoy the moment, no-one – for once – did more than Noémie. “I got my moment and it’s my medal,” the youngest Fox said, grinning. “We’re walking away with three gold medals in our family, which is insane.”
