Canoeing-Australia honours its first family of paddling with Fox Island

SYDNEY : Olympic champion paddlers Jess and Noemie Fox are to have an island at the whitewater centre built for the 2000 Sydney Games named after their family, the New South Wales government said on Wednesday.

The Penrith Whitewater Stadium, the home of Australia's high-performance programme for the sport, will now boast a "Fox Island" when it hosts the Canoe Slalom World Championships next year.

Jess, a 14-times world champion, won her second and third Olympic gold medals in July, while Noemie, who has won two team world titles, joined her sister as an Olympic champion by winning the kayak cross event in Paris.

"In recognition of the outstanding contribution the Fox family has made to the paddling community ... the island in the heart of Penrith Whitewater Stadium will now be known as Fox Island," the NSW Government said in a statement.

The statement also announced that local and national government would pitch in A$3.2 million ($2.14 million) to help Paddle Australia stage the event, which is expected to attract crowds of up to 20,000.

"We have seen at recent World Championships and Olympic Games, how much fans enjoy our sport with packed crowds creating a wonderful atmosphere," said Jess Fox.

"I remember being a six-year-old in the stands for Sydney 2000 and an 11-year-old in the stands when the World Championships were here in 2005, so to have that legacy 20, 25 years on, for me it means so much."

The sisters' father Richard, who won 10 world kayak titles for Britain, is a former Australia national head coach and was a key voice in the campaign to have the centre constructed in the far west of Sydney for the 2000 Olympics.

Their mother, Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, won eight kayak world titles for her native France in the 1980s