Richard Munro Fox (born 5 June 1960 in Winsford, Somerset) is a British slalom canoeist who competed for Great Britain from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. He won eleven medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with ten golds (K1: 1981, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1993; K1 team: 1979, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1993) and a bronze (K1: 1979). Fox also won the overall World Cup title three times (1988, 1989, 1991) and the Euro Cup (discontinued competition) four times.
Fox also finished fourth in the K1 event at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Early life and canoeing beginnings
Fox was born in Somerset, England, but moved to Harpenden, Hertfordshire, in his younger years. His father, Roger Fox, an official with the British Canoe Union, was one of the founder members in 1970, with Ron Vessey and Richard Scaife, of the St Albans and District Canoe Club. Fox attended St Albans Boys' Grammar School (later to become Verulam School) from 1971 and started attending his father's canoe rolling sessions at the Cottonmill Swimming Baths from the age of 11. His initial interest was purely recreational and Fox would go on canoeing trips with other club paddlers in boats he and his father had built together. In 1975 Fox began slalom training with the club at Dobbs Weir in Hoddesden and at Sharnbrook in Bedfordshire. Fox was reluctant but eventually by 1976 got involved in racing and made the British Junior Canoe Slalom team as a reserve.
Racing career
Despite finishing outside the top 20 in his first races, Fox impressed with his obvious speed. His problem in the early years was the number of penalty points he accrued for hitting gates. In early 1977, Pete Keane (a member of the senior British C1 team) got Fox a place at the Spring senior training camp in Matlock, Derbyshire, where Fox impressed the renowned technical coach Ken Langford and began, what was to become, a long and successful relationship. At the first race of the season on the River Tay at Grandtully in Scotland, to the disbelief of other paddlers, Fox went faster than the current British No.1 and future world champion, Albert Kerr, but again suffered from too many penalty points. Nevertheless, throughout the course of the year Fox qualified for the 4-man team to go the World Championships in Spittal (where Kerr won the first of his World Championships).
After these early successes, Fox's paddling went into decline. He was determined to spend some time on his A-Level studies and avoid being thrown out of school and his kayaking performance was plagued by crashing into too many gates, causing him to miss out on selection for the British team in 1978. The underlying belief in his ability prompted Fox and Langford to begin a new programme of mental analysis and rehearsal of gate technique that was eventually to lead to Fox becoming the master of his event for over a decade. First, he moved to Stone in Staffordshire where, in late 1977, UK Sport had established one of a number of sporting 'Centres of Excellence' in an attempt to improve international sporting performance. After initial difficulties trying to remain motivated and focused while working 10-hour days as a labourer, Fox was offered a job with the Centre undertaking a 6-month facilities survey: effectively he was given money to become a full-time canoeist. The intense training programme devised by Langford paid off and Fox achieved a bronze medal in the K1 Individual class at the World Championships in Jonquierre, as well as a team gold, before going on to win his first individual World Championships at Bala in 1981.
In 1979 Fox enrolled as a Physical Education student at Birmingham University in England and benefited from one of the early sports scholarship programmes being developed by UK universities such as Bath, Stirling and Birmingham. He received a $10,000 grant in 1980 to suspend his studies and continue his paddle training in preparation for the 1981 World Championships. Langford and Fox worked on perfecting Fox's technique of "speed through precision" which not only propelled him to success but produced a World Championship winning team with Wain and Kerr. From 1979 to 1993 Fox won either individual gold or team gold or both, in the K1 Class, at every World Championships except for 1991. At the Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympics, Fox finished fourth in the K1 Slalom. He was awarded an MBE for his services to British sport in the 1986 Birthday Honours.