“A WEIGHT THAT’S OFF ME”: HOW NICK NOTTEN RETURNED TO TOP OF THE PODIUM
Nick Notten has always felt grateful for the life that paddling has helped him lead.
His uplifting outlook is part of the reason he’s so respected by the global surfski community.
Even so, when the 2021 ICF World Champion stepped off the plane and onto Reunion Island this week, he found himself in a moment of reflection.
“I walked through the airport, collected my bag, got in the car and just looked out of the window thinking how surreal it is that I can do things like this.” Notten says.
“I suddenly just felt extremely grateful for everything that has happened to me in paddling over the last five years.
“And that’s despite getting sick, because I still get visit these incredible places and do all of these incredible things.
“It feels very unfair,” he laughs. “I know other people that have to go through exhausting things and jump through all kinds of hoops for their passions, just to have a similar experience to what I’m having right now.
“I’m here at Reunion going paddling, surfing and hiking… it’s literally a prize people would win in a lottery.
“I must say, I did reflect on that thinking, ‘I’m so stoked.”
Nick Notten (second from the right) with fellow paddlers on Reunion Island.
When The Paddler caught up with Notten, one of South Africa’s leading paddlers, that sense of tropical optimism was infectious.
He had travelled to the idyllic destination for a week of surfski races, held in conjunction with the ICF, marked with ‘World Cup’ branding.
“When I was asked, I thought, ‘An island destination? I won’t say no to that.’” He laughs. “Every time I’ve been to an island, it’s been awesome.”
“At the moment where I’m sitting there’s very much an island vibe. Succulent trees, lots of birds, sunshine and we’re looking out over a reef where there’s a break at the back.”
Notten’s gratitude is important to illustrate, as it goes a long way to explaining why his recent win at the esteemed Pete Marlin race is one of surfski’s feel-good stories of the year.
It’s almost two years to the day when Notten had to withdraw from the Shaw and Partners WA Race Week due to a debilitating, and largely unknown, form of post-viral fatigue.
After a long, uncertain journey since, he’s now back on top of the podium.
“It’s crazy,” he says. “It’s like there’s a bit of a weight that’s off me.
“It makes me believe I am back to the kind of form where I can really race against people who are really competitive and actually do well.
“It wasn’t like I was physically stopped from paddling, or that I was no longer good at paddling. But if you want to go to races and do well against the best in the world, you can’t arrive and feel like you can’t push yourself.
“It’s a massive relief to know that all of the stuff that I’ve gone through, in terms of the work to figure out my training and feel healthy, has helped me to have really broken through.
“Now I know this is something that I can still do and do well.”
The field at the Pete Marlin is always stacked with world-class talent, but to make it even harder this year, it was devoid of any wind.
The 20 kilometre course was gruelling, with the ocean serving up the kind of glassy bump that doesn’t give you a chance to relax.
While many struggled, Notten showed no sign of the limitations he’s experienced for the past two years, reclaiming the prestigious title almost one minute clear of Australian Oscar Jones and South African Josh Fenn.
BACK ON TOP: Notten (centre) with Oscar Jones (left) and Josh Fenn (right) after the Pete Marlin.
It was the kind of performance that even Notten had doubted he’d ever be able to produce again.
And it’s why he says it’s the most enjoyable of his career.
“No one ever wants to give up… alright, maybe people sometimes want to give up,” laughs.
“But it’s not a natural thought to back off or stop and decide not to carry on. For me, stopping paddling entirely was never on the cards.
“But in the back of my mind, I wondered, ‘Maybe I’ll never be as good as I was.’
“That’s a real thought you have to wrestle with. You can’t let it invade your training, and you can’t let it invade your life and psyche. But you have to be aware that it’s something that is possible.
“So Pete Marlin was such a cool experience, not just because the race and the wider event is always great, but also because I actually felt good during it.
“To come out on top, and convincingly on top, made me think, ‘Maybe I am back to some of the strength I had before all of this began.’”
At the end of 2021, Notten was in the form of his career.
He’d just captured the ICF World Championship on the Canary Islands, he’d won the Pete Marlin for the second time and then captured the iconic Cape Point Challenge title.
But over the following season, he wasn’t able to build on that standard.
A 10th place at the 2022 World Championships, his title defence, led to him looking for answers.
A blood test confirmed what he had feared.
“My GP said to me, here’s the results. You have a reading for Epstein-Barr Virus, which gives you the glandular fever variant.” Notten told The Paddler at the time.
“It’s tough. Obviously I have been waiting such a long time for this race, sort of the last three years to get these international events back. It’s such a shame to miss it.”
To try and recover, Notten had to step away from elite sport. Something that couldn’t be further from his always-active lifestyle.
Even with that sacrifice, he was told the future of his flourishing sporting career was uncertain.
“There’s nothing specific that I can point to that kept me going,” he reflects. “I think in general, I had a bit of optimism that things would improve, or at least change over time.
“I also found it extremely helpful to not take yourself, or the activity, too seriously.
“Not in the sense that you don’t care what happens, but just remembering there are more important things. Things can always be worse or more stressful.
“You almost develop a light-hearted way of thinking about it all.
“With what I went through with post-viral fatigue, it’s somewhat stress-related. Stressing yourself out wouldn’t be helpful to you. In fact, it would make things worse.
“I just accepted that something was a little bit off, but I didn’t take myself so seriously that I needed certain things to happen for me to feel good.
“It was almost a sense of just letting things take their course.”
So, Notten pushed his elite-paddler’s mentality to the side, and just cherished being on the water.
“I feel very, very lucky that I have a sport that is so enjoyable to keep me going.
“I’m trying to think of a sport that might be a bit boring,” he laughs. “No one wants to think their sport is boring.
“But if you’re a swimmer, for example, and you’re in the pool staring at the black line, I think it’s harder to derive enjoyment when you’re not performing the way you’d like.
“In surfski, you can derive so much enjoyment every single time you’re on the water, and especially with friends. I feel lucky.”
He didn’t know it at the time, but those paddles were the start of his journey back to the top.
The turning point arrived last year, somewhere fairly unexpected for someone recovering from a health battle.
The final stretch of the 52 kilometre Cape Point Challenge, battling for victory.
“I think the sign of a good race when you’re an elite paddler is when you’re getting to the end and feel like you can keep going, only to look around and see that people are falling apart.
“Sometimes you don’t realise the pace is on, and I got a glimpse of that at Cape Point.
“That feeling when you’re paddling at your peak, and seeing it’s quite devastating to really good paddlers, that was a sure sign to me that, ‘Woah, things are improving.’
“I was going flat-out, as hard as I could go, but the pace was more than anyone else could handle.
“Up until that point, I found that I was always looking for the next gear and never able to find it. You checked and the other oaks were edging ahead.
“It was so nice to have a race where, for once, it felt like I was the one getting away.”
Nick Notten and Josh Fenn after the 2023 Cape Point Challenge.
Nick went on to claim his second event title that day, kickstarting his 2024 season.
He finished ninth at the South African National Championships in May, but it was his performance at the 2024 World Championships at Madeira in October that caught the attention of the global racing community, crossing the line in sixth place.
“I was obviously pretty happy with it because it was a loaded field, and a ridiculously hard course.
“But the main thing I took away from it, the thing that I was really happy about, was that although I had to absolutely kill myself to finish sixth, I wanted to do better.
“I wanted to be winning these races again. Before that, I was in a place that wasn’t as competitive.
“I was really happy with my paddle and had no more effort to give. In the last six kilometres, I think my average heart rate was 180.
“That was also a very positive sign to know that if I could get some of my other physiciality back, my body could handle a very high tempo.”
Recent results show he was certainly able to do that.
And the key was consistency.
“Because of the way the fatigue comes back in periods, the worst thing you could do is overtrain when you felt flat,” Notten explains.
“Previously, I found I always had to back off at the smallest sign of getting sick and tired.
“I had to re-learn how to put in week-in, week-out. I feel like now, I can do that again.”
Two years on from pulling out of his trip to Australia, Notten is now back to health, preparing to go again.
He’s performed in Australia before, finishing second at the Doctor in 2019, against a red-hot field.
Although he’s trying to stay patient, the dream of wearing the Doctor coat is front of mind.
“You always do races to win,” he says. “That’s where you should always be aiming.”
“A win would be the first dream, but I’m aware everyone wants to win in Australia. The margins at the end there are so small. A 30 second win at the Doctor is a big win.
“If all goes well, and I can have the same race that I had at Pete Marlin, I would really like to come away with a podium from the Race Week, and in particular, the Doctor.”
Given what’s unfolded in the five years since he last made the trip, being on the start line is an achievement within itself.
