It is the second consecutive year the dual Olympian has received the award which recognises the year’s most outstanding female athlete or female team in any paddlesport. 

Fox was a finalist alongside Hungarian canoe sprinter Danuta Kozak and Canadian Laurence Vincent-Lapointe after an outstanding season on the water.

“It is such an honour to win this award for the second time in a row now,” Fox said. 

“The finalists are all incredible athletes across all disciplines of canoeing who have had phenomenal seasons and contributed so much to the sport so to be recognised in this way is huge and I am very grateful for the votes and support of the WPA, broader canoeing community and all the fans.”

At the start of her record-breaking season, Fox went on an unprecedented winning streak, winning six straight World Cup races in only 21 days in June 2018.

She was undefeated in the C1 event and only missed out on gold in the K1 twice and despite those results, Fox became the first athlete – male or female – to achieve the 2018 World Cup crown in both the C1 and K1 events.

In September, at the same venue where she experienced heartbreak during the Rio Olympics in 2016, she wrapped up her season with a history-making double gold in the women’s K1 and C1 at the 2018 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships. 

After winning the C1 title, Fox became the first canoe slalom athlete to have gone through an entire season undefeated in a boat class and brought her individual World title count to seven and her overall World Champion titles tally to nine (including team events). 

With this, the Penrith-based paddler surpassed her father Richard Fox to become the most successful individual paddler in history and she also leapfrogged her mother Miriam Fox-Jerusalmi, who had topped the leader board as the most successful female slalom paddler.

The 2019 World Cup season will get underway on June 14 at London's Olympic white-water centre before finishing in Prague on September 6 with the World Champions to be held in Spain later that month.

This will start Fox's journey towards qualifying for both the kayak and canoe competitions at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.