Rebecca Giddens-

Kern County’s whitewater is the training ground of champions, and occasionally becomes the home of them as well.

Two-time Olympian and Wisconsin native Rebecca Giddens spent much of her training time on the Kern River. She and husband Eric, her former coach, now reside in Kernville, where she’s the proprietor of the local microbrewery and restaurant.

Giddens was at the top of her game in 2004 when she captured the silver medal in the K1 whitewater slalom competition in Athens, Greece. Going into the finals, Giddens was in fourth place but leaped to the medal stand with a solid finishing run to finish just 4.59 seconds back of the gold medalist Elena Kaliska of Slovakia.

This medal was the first for the US in eight years but the third time in four Olympics that the women had medaled since

whitewater slalom was brought back into the Olympic program in 1992 after a 20-year hiatus.

Giddens finished seventh at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Giddens’s other kayaking credentials are equally impressive. She is a is a three-time world champion, five-time national champion, and has been named the US Canoe Kayak athlete of the year on four separate occasions.

She won the 2002 Whitewater Slalom World Championships and a bronze medal in the 2003 World Championships. She also won the 2000 World Cup series.