Canada's Betteridge, Baldoni gearing up for 'exciting' Olympic debut of kayak cross

Paris is set to debut a thrilling addition to the Olympic programme.

As Canada's Lois Betteridge navigates her first experience at the Games, she gets the rare opportunity to take on a brand new event — kayak cross.

"Being a part of Team Canada is really cool," she said. "We're in quite a small sport, but to come here and be racing for Canada with 300+ other athletes, it's maybe a once-in-a-lifetime experience, hopefully not, but I don't think you can beat that."

After finishing 21st in the women's kayak slalom and 19th in the canoe slalom, the Ottawa native will become one of the first Olympians in kayak cross, also known as extreme kayak. She'll compete alongside Australian favourite Jessica Fox, who looks to complete the triple and win each of the canoe-kayak events.

Like its winter counterparts, ski and snowboard cross, four paddlers will be launched off a two-metre high ramp before making their way through an obstacle course of strategically placed up-and-down stream gates. Competitors will be permitted to hold off their opponents through incidental contact.

Paddlers must also complete a barrel roll at some point in the race before crossing the finish line.

'Most exciting addition' to Olympics

"Kayak cross might be the most exciting addition to the Olympic program. We go down, and we're battling each other. The rules allow limited contact, but we're allowed to push quite hard against each other," Betteridge said. "You have to be careful not to hurt the other people; if you do that, you're ranked last."

Having made the semifinals of the sport at the Lima 2019 Pan Am Games, Betteridge — alongside Canadian teammate and Santiago 2023 Pan Am Games silver medallist Alex Baldoni — will hope to contend in the new Olympic event, with few athletes taking outright favourite positions in the ninth year of the sport's existence.

"It's super exciting to see our sport get another discipline and another opportunity for athletes like me to come through as well," said Fox, a six-time Olympic medallist.

Baldoni prepared after Pan Am success

At just 20 years old, Baldoni doesn't know the sport of canoe-kayak without kayak cross. 

During last fall's Pan Am Games in Chile, he collected his first international Games medal, paddling to silver on the Aconcagua River in Los Andes.

He won the time trials at that event, but was outdone by Brazil's Guilherme Mapelli in the final. With that success, there's some tentative optimism about earning a medal in the event's Olympic debut.

"I'm really excited about [kayak cross]. We've done a lot of training with other athletes, so I think I've prepared well for the event," he said in French.

Great Britain's Joe Clarke enters the competition as the outright favourite, having three consecutive world titles in Kayak cross. But Switzerland's Martin Dougoud, also a contender in the K1, could challenge for the gold medal.

"When I set about this journey and the Paris project, it was to try and win two medals, one of them being gold. That still remains the same," Clarke said.

"I kind of really want to win because that would cement myself in the history books and because I'd be one of about five people ever to be world, European, and Olympic champions at the same time."

Competition gets underway with time trials on Aug. 2, followed by heats and repechage rounds on Aug. 3. The quarterfinal through medal races will be held on Aug. 4, streaming live on CBC Gem and CBC Sports' Paris 2024 website and app.