Corran Descy Addison (born in South Africa) is a slalom canoeist, whitewater kayaker, surfer and surfboard designer.
They would construct the fiberglass kayaks they needed to paddle the rivers in the basement of Rhodes University where his father Graeme Addison was a professor of journalism.
They were astonished, replayed the segment of the tape, and with the aid of the 1981 world silver medalist kayaker Jerome Truran, taught themselves to roll.
Effectively indestructible, short and maneuverable, these boats completely changed the face of paddling for the young paddler whose skillsets increased at such a rapid rate that by 1987 he claimed to have run the highest waterfall in the world; a 31m dam in Tignes, France.
[3] Addison competed for South Africa in a number of world freestyle kayaking championships, winning more events than any other competitor in the years 1993 to 1999, and earned a silver medal in 1995 and 1999,[4] and bronze in 1998.
Addison continued to work on the concept and brought it to the mass market in the early 1990s [5] that is the technology upon which most modern whitewater kayaks are based).
[7] The Riot brand was notorious for cutting edge designs and a go-for-broke attitude to freestyle kayaking and extreme white water.
One boat which he designed was the Glide, the kayak that is reputed to have been responsible for a last-minute rule change at the 1997 world championships because it was so far ahead in technology that he was considered to have an unfair advantage by the other athletes.
[citation needed] In 2002 Addison took his tinkering in the field of making sports action videos from an amateurish pastime to a professional level when he started Imagine Media.
The name was changed to Imagine Eco, and was considered a cutting-edge company in the field of sustainable and ecological business, and has been leading the way in promoting responsible manufacturing in the surf industry.
Based in Montreal Canada, where he started Riot in the 1990s, and the brand is designing a new line of highly innovative whitewater specific paddleboards and kayaks.