About Us

Gentoo Sports was started in 2012 by Paul Yates and Joe Beevers. We both love sport and between us we have competed across a huge range of sports from rugby to tennis and football to athletics. During our teens we both settled on kayaking as our main sport, which is how we came to meet.

We understand what makes a product worth having. It’s really important to us that the products we sell are pieces that we like to wear ourselves. We believe that kit has to be tested and refined before it’s worth using. If you were to rifle through our kit bag you would find the same stuff that we are selling. Some of the kayaking things we stock are just items we have used but struggled to get hold of again, so we’ve sorted out supply so that everyone else can get the same kit we love. You can rest assured - all the items are comfortable, high quality, and long-lasting.

Meet the team:

Paul Yates
Paul is the brains of the operation, with a PhD in materials science he is the man who organises everything. Paul deals with most of the technical, boring stuff as well as taking care of a whole host of day to day tasks and occasionally posts over on the blog.

Back in the day he represented GB on a number of occasions from 2009 to 2014 picking up various National medals along the way. Following a spell with glandular fever he stepped away from full time training. There’s still some unfinished business though, and rumors of him doing DW some time keep resurfacing!

Joe Beevers
Joe is our product-man, he enjoys finding high quality products at affordable prices. Alongside Paul, he also writes blog articles about anything kayak related. Joe’s also a flatwater kayaker, despite starting relatively late (after competing in squash, tennis, rugby and cricket) he rose to a high level in sprint kayaking.

He’s stopped paddling super seriously now, although he’s dabbling in some WWR racing. During his time he got a lot of international competitions under his belt including a senior World Championships, U23 Europeans, the World University Games (clocking a third place in the 1000m K1 in 3:33) and multiple senior World Cups.

Legal extras

Company number: 08184716

Vat number: GB369851543