Bay of Plenty kayaker Lisa Carrington managed to prune her hectic world championship schedule by at least one race overnight, pairing with Caitlin Ryan to win their K2 500m heat and progressing straight through to the Saturday night's final.
As well as not having to race the semifinal later in the day on the Racice course in the Czech Republic, it was also an important psychological win for the Kiwis. It was their first time racing together at a major regatta and they found themselves in the same heat as highly-rated German pair Franziska Weber and Tina Dietze.
Their 1:41.371 effort was the fastest of the day, however, and they joined Hungary's Tamara Takacs and Ninetta Vad (1:42.073) and Slovenia's Spela Ponomarenko Janic and Anja Osterman (1:43.749) in progressing straight from the heats.
"There's never an easy road to the finals, so we wanted to really give it a crack at winning today so we could go straight through," Carrington said.
"It was good for both of us to get out there finally in the K2 and finally have a crack, we've been waiting for a little while now."
