Breaking waves and barriers: Kira Bester's rise as a surfskiing trailblazer

Daily Maverick

9 hours ago

She has paddled her way to global stardom and now has the Olympic Games in her sights.
Kira Bester (23) befriended the ocean at the age of four, when her father took her there for the first time. She hasn't looked back. Her love for the sea has grown with each passing year, to the point where she has made it her office as the surfski world champion.
Bester is the reigning overall women's world champion after clinching gold in the Under-23 category of the Canoe Ocean Racing World Championships in 2024. Her time of 1:43:39 during the 21km race was marginally better than the 1:44:01 that her compatriot, Michelle Burn, managed at the annual competition.
What exactly is surfskiing? It's a paddle sport that combines the thrill of competition with the beauty and power of the sea. Competitors traverse open watercourses using long, sit-on-top kayaks known as surfskis to see who can cross the finish line quickest.
Despite fending off competition from senior compatriots such as Burn and Melanie van Niekerk for the title of the world's best woman surfskier, Bester believes she has not tapped into her full potential.
'That hasn't really set in. I don't feel like I'm on top yet, even though I have claimed the world title. I don't feel like I am the big dog,' Bester told Daily Maverick. 'I still feel like I'm an up-and-coming little person, which is funny considering what I've done already.'
What exactly has she done? Besides kayaking to world supremacy, that is? In April, she was crowned national champion after clinching gold during the South African Surfski Championships.
Just days after that, Bester teamed up with Van Niekerk for victory at the Prescient Freedom Paddle, South Africa's premier doubles ocean race, around Robben Island.
Then in May, Bester added the Canoe Ocean Racing World Championships to her already impressive catalogue. She defeated compatriot Jade Wilson as well as Spanish paddler Thais Delrieu to claim the overall victory in Villajoyosa, Spain.
Yet Bester, who was born in Pretoria, insists that she is far from achieving the goals that will truly cement her name in the history books.
'I haven't really disrupted anything yet. Obviously, I've made people have to train a bit harder and made them push themselves a bit harder, which is cool,' she said.
Los Angeles dreaming
Her biggest goal? Just like many athletes who have come before her, Bester dreams of competing at the Olympic Games, and she has her sights firmly set on the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
Her coach of four years, Peter Cole, says this will be her most daunting achievement.
'Qualifying for the Olympics as South Africans is hard,' he said. 'You're up against countries that have huge budgets and their departments of sport put a lot of emphasis on Olympic disciplines. The money that is thrown at Olympic athletes is huge.'
'It's quite hard from our point of view because there isn't really funding for [the 'smaller' sports], unless you've actually been to an Olympics and you've won a medal,' said Cole, who is a former surfskier himself.
'So, it's a long road. I tell her to just focus on what's coming up.
'She has a huge opportunity to defend her title in South Africa [for example]. There aren't many people who get to race a World Championship in their home country.
'She has an opportunity to do that in October in Durban. For me that is the first goal, which will open a few more doors from a funding point of view.'
Humble beginnings
Despite the challenges she faces as she paddles towards cementing her legacy, environmental scientist Bester could not have imagined that she'd be in the position she currently finds herself in.
Having been introduced to life-saving when she was nine years old, she eventually gravitated towards surfskiing.
This was to improve on her skills as a life-saver — something she took up after moving to the Western Cape, where she lived in Melkbosstrand, then later in Gordon's Bay and Strand.
'One of the events in the life-saving field, the competitive field, is paddling.
'So when I was growing up, I was doing a lot of life-saving and I wanted to be really good at it. So, I decided to put a lot of energy into my surfski paddling,' she said.
An epiphany
After participating in a few races over the years, Bester's epiphany that she could actually compete with the best in surfskiing came in 2023, when she triumphed at the Gorge Downwind Champs, held on the Columbia River in the US.
Although the water is now her second home, the former University of Cape Town student said she has constantly had to battle herself and her mind — especially when she is in the middle of the ocean — on her journey to success.
'There's this little voice that comes out, like in the cartoons where you have that little devil on one shoulder and the little angel on the other. There's one telling you that you can't do this.
'And then the other one is saying, 'You can, you've been training so hard for it.'
'You go through these phases when you are doing a race like the world championships,' Bester explained. 'You are pushing yourself so hard that you don't think you can go any more.
'In my case, the positive voice usually ends up overpowering the negative one.'
Bester added: 'You have to really train for that, not just physically, but mentally. You have to train to conquer that little voice in your head.
'Because in all things in life, you always have that little voice that says you can't do it. And then you need to be able to tell yourself that you can, because you've prepared for that moment.' DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.