Corran Addison

Corran Descy Addison was born in South Africa and is a slalom canoeist, whitewater kayaker, surfer and surfboard designer, now based in Montreal, Quebec. He began kayaking as a child with his father Graeme Addison, a journalism professor at Rhodes University, building fibreglass boats for expeditions on unexplored rivers. In 1987 he claimed to have run the highest waterfall ever attempted in a kayak, a 31 metre drop into Lake Tignes in France, and in 1989 he ran Looking Glass Falls in a Batman costume and broke his back. He competed in whitewater slalom in the early 1990s and finished 34th in the K-1 event at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. For South Africa he won more freestyle kayaking world championship events than any other competitor between 1993 and 1999, with silver in 1995 and 1999 and bronze in 1998, and he also made kayaking films and designed boats.