Olympian kayaker designs courses for whitewater parks.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: ENTREPRENEURS

THREE-TIME OLYMPIAN KAYAKER Scott Shipley might not be paddling at this summer's games in London, but he'll leave a lasting mark on the city with the whitewater course he helped create for the paddling events.

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Shipley founded Lyons-based S20 Design and Engineering Inc. in 2006, and now is at the forefront of the booming international whitewater parks business. "It's crazy," he says. "My original plan was to design ships for the Navy." He got a pair of engineering degrees from Georgia Tech in the wake of the 2000 Olympics in Atlanta, then veered from his shipbuilding plans back to his whitewater roots.

"The heart and soul of S20 is my background in racing," Shipley says. 'That brings a lot to the table." So does his engineering ingenuity: His patent-pending Rapid Blocs are revolutionizing whitewater parks all over the world, from Durango to Prague. "Each block can be picked up by a person," he says. "Before that, you were moving a stone with a tractor."

Some S20 projects, many of them in Europe, involve manmade channels and $3 million pumps; others involve breathing life back into a natural waterway. In the latter cases, Shipley's trace sits squarely at the intersection of environmental restoration, urban planning and outdoor recreation.

Of his current projects in Colorado, Shipley is most jazzed about a whitewater park on the...