Profile: Tao Berman

Berman, at home in White Salmon.

“Wooooo!” Berman shouts. There’s silence, followed by the unmistakable sound of a human body crashing into the water. Thirteen seconds later, Berman surfaces. To my Inner Beavis, it’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen someone do. “My whole life,” he says later, “I’ve always done things way harder than my friends did, and I didn’t realize that they had more fear until I got interviewed and was asked, ‘How do you deal with butterflies in your stomach?’ It’s the first time I realized that anybody had that stuff.”

I have “that stuff.” After an adolescence that had me on a first-name basis with the local emergency-room staff, I believe “that stuff” has kept me out of urgent care as an adult. And I’m feeling it as I prepare to do one of the bigger jackass things of my adult life—Berman has talked me into jumping into the river and sliding down 12-foot Punchbowl Falls on my ass. I sit on a snot-slick rock and chase away the fear welling inside. I eventually dump myself into the flow, and the river quickly takes me down the falls. The force of the cold, pounding water holds me down 15 feet below the surface before I breach eight seconds later and 75 feet downriver. For a shake-and-bake adrenaline rush, it can’t be beat. And I have Berman to thank for it.

We’re shooting pool at Berman’s house and I take a look around. Instead of numerous kayak videos, he has the complete set of late-night infomercial self-help guru Anthony Robbins’ Personal Power II: The Driving Force. Berman starts to open up about the criticism leveled at him. I can tell that it has gotten to him. It’s subtle, but it is there.

“I have a great life, but a lot of people don’t see the downside to it. If you can’t take criticism all the time from other athletes you’re competing against—you know, people bashing you in print—then you just couldn’t do it. I mean, there’s stuff going on all the time. Not as much as there used to be, but it’s a very major part of it. You know, it’s definitely . . . a lonely place where I’m at. I mean, I don’t really get lonely, but it’s definitely like there’s nobody that . . . I really identify with.”

No other kayaker seeks and attains so much exposure. Last spring the Discovery Channel filmed Berman for its Stunt Junkies program and flew him to Michigan, where he attempted to seal launch out of a helicopter and into the froth of 65-foot Superior Falls. The episode is scheduled to run in August. He has also appeared in a Body By Jake infomercial and has his own video game, Tao Berman’s Extreme Kayaking.

“He’s just a go-getter,” says Jamie Simon, who works in Red Bull’s athlete marketing department. “He’s definitely more proactive in coordinating media and sponsors than most athletes.”

Teva was one of Berman’s most high-profile sponsors, one that many pro kayakers would be honored to land. The contract was not renewed this year. “It was great to be affiliated with them, but you don’t have to take whatever you can get,” Berman says.

Berman replaced Teva with a one-year contract with Adidas, better known for basketball shoes and endorsing NBA stars like Tim Duncan. “He lives by the corporation of Tao,” says kayaker John Grace. Berman’s career plan is to have an incline, a leveling off, and a decline. He figures he has about 10 years of professional kayaking left in him. After that he may run for public office. The question is, donkey or elephant? “I’d like to say that I’d run as a Republican, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be affiliated with Bush,” he says. “I mean, I am a Republican, but I didn’t vote for Bush either time.”

A Republican whitewater kayaker. He couldn’t stand out more if he wore a Bomb Their Ass and Take Their Gas T-shirt to a Phish concert. Berman lines up for a difficult bank shot when I ask him if he received any feedback on his personality traits after he underwent a physical and psychological evaluation at the Red Bull Training Center in Austria. He mentions that they said he doesn’t let people he doesn’t know get close to him, but no, they didn’t delve deep into his psyche. Then he nails his shot. His ultracompetitiveness is comical to witness. Keller once left Berman a voice mail saying that he’d just held the abdominal-busting triangle pose for nine minutes. Berman called him back and said, “I just held it for over 15 minutes, but then I got bored so I stopped.” Even Berman’s close friends get annoyed with his Tiger Woods-like drive to win, earn, and promote.

“Everyone has qualities that you just have to accept,” says Bechtel. “Tao looks after number one first, but he also looks after his friends.” Says Knight, “I still think he’s incredibly cocky. But he’s also very friendly and enthusiastic.”

Part of me thinks I’ve made a friend. Another part wonders if I’m another piece in his PR puzzle. Either way, there’s more positive than negative. It’s no coincidence that each timed bike ride, trail run, and lake crossing I did in the week following my visit resulted in a personal record. Berman’s zeal has had the same effect on his friends.

Until then, Berman is bent on being the best kayaker and making the most money, and his proclivity to tell people about it is often maddening. Maybe it’s the fear of someday losing his status as a preeminent extreme athlete. Maybe he doesn’t want anybody to get too close to him, so his relentless pursuit of excellence and achievement are built-in barriers to give him the separation he needs. Maybe his self-promotion is just his way of seeking approval, and it is irksome when people criticize, rather than commend, him. The great ones often have an energy source that the rest of us don’t. Lance Armstrong rode his teammates almost as hard as his bike. Roger Clemens brushed back his own son in a scrimmage. Characteristics that win trophies don’t always win friends. One thing you can’t take away from Tao, though: he is who he is because—where fears make the rest of us walk a rapid or pull the grab loop—Tao’s fears morph into a single beam of confidence in its purest form. He believes he can, so he does.