RECESS: Surviving a Zambezi Hippo Attack - Juliet Starrett's Extreme Whitewater World Championship Story

Juliet and I have told pieces of this story over the years, but we've never sat down and told the whole thing from the beginning. This episode, I'm turning the tables and interviewing Juliet, because the full arc of how she ended up getting launched twelve feet into the air by a hippo on the Zambezi River is too good to tell any other way.

It starts in the late 1990s, when Juliet was a D1 rower turned wilderness river guide in California: fit, competent on Class IV water, and completely unaware that a tryout on the Kern River was about to drop her onto one of the most storied women's extreme whitewater teams in the world. We're talking Kelly Califadich, Julie Munger, Beth Rippins, Sue Norman, Brooke Winger, Rebecca Rusch: true legends of the sport. Juliet was the youngest, the least experienced, and by Rebecca's nickname for her, the MEAT in the middle of the boat. What she had was athletic horsepower, the right mindset, and no real concept yet of what she'd signed up for.

Winning nationals meant an all-expenses-paid trip to the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe for the 1997 World Championships. Two weeks of daily training in the Batoka Gorge: daily flips in Class V rapids, giardia, massive crocodiles between rapids, and a hundred-degree grueling hike in and out of the canyon every single day. Followed by a race they won. Then, because they'd budgeted a full month in-country, the team tacked on a five-day canoe safari at Mana Pools, Juliet's mom Janet included. Flat water. Wildlife. A chance to decompress.

Emphasis on WILDlife.

What Juliet describes about the moment of the hippo attack (the sound, the air, looking down into the open mouth of a four-thousand-pound animal) is something I still think about. And what she did in the seconds after hitting the water is the reason she's here to tell it.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• What it actually took to make a women's extreme whitewater World Championship team in the late 1990s — and why the word "extreme" mattered
• How high-volume rivers like the Zambezi differ from the Class IV whitewater most people have experienced, and why that gap is bigger than it sounds
• What two weeks of daily training in the Batoka Gorge looks like: the hike in, the carnage, the giardia, and what finally made the flipping stop
• Why hippos kill more people in Africa than almost any other large animal — and what makes their attacks so difficult to survive
• What Juliet's guide told the team in the safety talk before the canoe safari, and why the locals already knew not to be there
• The split-second decision Juliet made in the water after the attack — and why years of river guiding made the difference
• Why a lifetime of athletic competition and high-stakes environments still didn't prepare Juliet for this particular kind of fear
• What "primal terror" actually feels like, and how it's different from the adrenaline fear of running a dangerous rapid

Key Highlights: 

(00:00) Kelly sets up the episode: an interview with Juliet about a story that shaped their life together

(00:45) How they met at the Extreme Whitewater World Championships in Chile, including Kelly's infamous Class V swim

(01:53) What made this sport extreme: Camel Cigarette sponsorships, helicopter carnage footage, and Class V rivers worldwide

(04:28) Juliet's four World Championship venues: the Zambezi, Reventazon, Orange River, and Futaleufú

(06:26) The legendary women's team: Kalafatich, Munger, Rippins, Norman, and Rebecca Rusch

(09:07) Juliet's origin story: D1 rowing at Berkeley, chasing a tan, and becoming a wilderness river guide

(12:01) The tryout on the Kern River and the Monday phone call that changed her life

(15:08) Winning nationals means Zimbabwe: understanding high-volume rivers for the first time

(21:18) Two weeks in the Batoka Gorge: daily flips, giardia, crocodiles, and finding the Nyaminyami

(29:42) Winning the World Championship and the greatest French fries of Juliet's life

(32:42) The Ready State Mobility Coach

(32:47) The canoe safari plan: five days on the lower Zambezi at Mana Pools, with Janet, Juliet's Mom

(36:31) Gary's safety talk: machetes, three guns, hippos, crocs, lions, and snakes

(38:31) Days one and two on the river: crocodile wakes, hippo pods, and the Jumanji paddle bang

(41:57) Hippo City or Hippo Bronx: the democratic vote that nearly cost Juliet her life

(45:40) The attack: a sound like a gunshot, launched 12 feet into the air, and swimming for their lives

(50:17) Stranded on a Cape Buffalo island, Tupperware canoe repair, and three silent days to the takeout

(57:13) Juliet can't be beat at the "share an interesting fact" ice-breaker game

(58:24) Primal fear and why Juliet will never do a canoe safari again

(59:36) Reacting under extreme pressure, not freezing in the moment

(1:02:33) Hippo shrine