Two-time world surf-ski champion Sean Rice talks about his sport to people who gathered at Outdoor Chattanooga on Tuesday, Apr. 12, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Surfskiing is a low-impact sport that works out the whole body without taxing it unnecessarily, although Sean Rice can attest that it is possible to get slapped in the face by leaping seals.
Surfskiing is also a sport in which you can casually brush shoulders with a world champion and maybe get some pointers in the process.
That scene unfolded at Outdoor Chattanooga in Coolidge Park this week, where Rice offered a Tuesday presentation touching on everything from the origins of the sport to his 2012 encounter off the South African coast with a seal that bloodied his face and gave him a remarkable story to tell about his niche paddle sport.
“It didn’t see me. I didn’t see it,” said Rice, who thought he had been taken out by a shark. “And what they do is jump. So it jumped and hit me in the head. They’ve got big teeth and thick whiskers and it knocked me out cold.”
Rice, 26, capped off his Scenic City stay with a Wednesday evening surfski workshop for a handful of local paddlers interested in surfskis, which are long, skinny kayaks most popular in the coastal areas of Australia and South Africa.