Profile
11 THINGS
01. Dane spent 270 days on the water in 2013. (Yes, he kept count.) “It was a slow year,” he says, disappointed by a number below 300.
02. He may have surpassed his father in freestyle scores at last year’s World Championships, but he can’t beat EJ in a round of golf—a primary pastime at the Jackson compound in Rock Island, Tennessee.
03. Dane listens to the same pump up playlist before every competition—its mostly Dubstep tracklist includes mind-blasting beats from Rusko and Flux Pavillion. The first track is Krewella’s Play Hard.
04. Dane has severe hearing loss. It’s only about 30 percent of what it should be, he says. “Reading lips is a big part of being able to communicate.” From a kayak he can read the lips of someone standing on shore. EJ has similar troubles hearing, but for Dane, being born three months premature exacerbated the problem.
05. Dane is incapable of imagining himself in a non-athletic career. When asked (in 10 different ways) what conventional career he’d pick if he had to spend his life off the water, his answer was “a boulderer.”
06. Since dominating in one extreme sport isn’t enough, Dane wants to take the world of competitive climbing by storm. It started as a cross training exercise to strengthen his shoulders for kayaking, but a new sport is fun he says, because when you’re used to being a pro, “sucking at something” is a serious motivator.
YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT
DANE JACKSON
07. His secret to crushing competition? Relearn every move for each individual feature. “I forget everything I know and relearn it to get it to work for that hole,” he says. He started from scratch with the McNasty at the Nantahala Outdoor Center to train for the Worlds.
08. He says his nemesis freestyle trick is the Lunar Orbit. For your chance to beat Dane, see step-by-step instructions for the move at www.rapidmedia. com/0197.
09. Also eluding him are the steps towards his eventual goal of being a family man like EJ. “The problem with how much I travel and how I live in the middle of nowhere when I’m home, is that a girlfriend is definitely not super easy to find.”
10. Dane was homeschooled in the Jackson family’s RV, but the sound of the river made it hard to do his homework. “It was really hard to want to do school when I could just walk out the door and go kayaking,” he says. He was far enough behind by tenth grade that he decided to make paddling a full-time gig.
11. In his 20 years on planet Earth, Dane has been to six continents, 20 countries, has paddled on approximately 200 rivers, dropped 10 different waterfalls (only counting ones over 40 feet high, of course), broken three paddles, zero bones, and gotten eight sets of stitches. EMMA DRUDGE
DIGITAL EXTRA: Though he
hasn’t broken any bones, Dane’s taken a beating or two—his worst injury ever was on a recent trip to Mexico. Click here to watch the web series that came from his trip.
DROP 10 OF 10, TLAPACOYAN, MEXICO. SEE #11. PHOTO: COURTESY JOHN RATHWELL / RED BULL CONTENT POOL
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