Luuka Jones: Age: 26. School: Otumoetai College. Achievements: five-times national canoe slalom champion; first female canoe slalom kayaker to represent New Zealand at an Olympic Games (Beijing 2008); 14th at London Olympics 2012; and finalist at last year's world champs. Goals: medal at next year's Rio Olympics
Luuka Jones
Luuka Jones has come a long way from her first Olympics in 2008, when as a 19-year-old she became the first female kayaker to represent the country in the competition's canoe slalom.
Since Beijing in 2008 and London four years later, the 26-year-old has upped the ante by dedicating herself full-time to her sport and training with a professional coach.
She says the support of High Performance Sport New Zealand and her coach, British Olympic canoe-slalom medallist Campbell Walsh, has been crucial to helping her achieve her best international result yet.
Jones achieved 10th place at last year's world champs after coming second in the semifinals.
"It was a huge result," she tells Bay of Plenty Times Weekend on the phone from Auckland, where she is attending a High Performance Sport NZ workshop. The former Otumoetai College student says the psychological aspect of her performance is something she has been able to focus on more fully in her recent training.
"It's about delivering when it counts. It's about practising those psychological and mental routines [of an Olympics] in everyday training and racing. By the time you get to the Olympics, you want to be 100 per cent confident in what you're doing."
Jones says she has grown into a more mature athlete since London and is confident of bringing home a medal at next year's Rio Olympics.
"I'm at the level that a good performance would result in a medal for me," she says.
She spoke to us a day after returning from an artificial whitewater course in Australia and is focusing on more of this training ahead of Rio.
There are no artificial courses in New Zealand, although one is being built in Auckland, and Jones says the rapids differ from natural whitewater.
"They're building the courses to be a lot bigger than they used to be. There are lots of steep drops and I'm smashed after a two-week camp on the Sydney Olympic course."
Canoe slalom - and specifically, K1, which is Jones' event - is known for being a sport in which results can change in an instant because of the way the water is moving constantly.
"Every rapid is different and every slalom course is different. You've got to be really good at kayaking and really accurate. It's just a constant routine of critiquing yourself and trying to be really consistent in a variable environment."
Whitewater kayaking has always been a part of Jones' life, thanks to growing up at Waimarino, next to Tauranga's Wairoa River.
"I'd just wake up in the morning and paddle down to training. And I used to work at the [Waimarino] Adventure Park."
She says Otumoetai College was hugely supportive - "I could turn up late to school and miss form class because it was for training" - and by the time she was 18, her drive to be world best was strong.
She worked three jobs to save enough money to move to Nottingham, where Campbell Walsh is based and where she now spends each European summer.
She worked at a medical centre doing filing in the mornings, at a smoothie bar during the day and did The Radio Network surveys in the evenings.
"I thought I'd try and stalk the British team and see what they were doing."
Her days of working three jobs are behind her and her dedication is paying off.
Since 2013, Jones has received financial support from High Performance Sport NZ and this week learned she will receive further funding from the Sky Next athletes' programme. "It makes a lot of difference being able to dedicate 100 per cent of my time to my sport," she says.
Mike Dawson: Age: 28. School: Tauranga Boys' College. Achievements: eight-time national canoe slalom champion; semifinalist London Olympic Games 2012; 12th place at world championships last year; and second at extreme kayak world championships 2014, 2011 and 2009, and 3rd in 2012. Goal: Medal at next year's Rio Olympics.
Mike Dawson
Mike Dawson is training in far-flung corners of the Earth, but the 28-year-old canoe-slalom champion credits his youth in Tauranga as helping take him to the top of his sport.
"Tauranga is a great place to launch a sports career," he says in an email from the United Arab Emirates, where he is doing a three-week training camp in the desert.
"The climate's great and the community is incredibly supportive ... In terms of a local stomping ground, the Wairoa River was a great place to pick up the skills I needed as a youngster."
The former Tauranga Boys' College student is seven-times national champion and was a semifinalist at the Olympics in 2012.
When in New Zealand, he trains on Rotorua's Kaituna River, and bases himself in the Czech Republic during the European season.
At the moment, his focus is on qualifying for Rio, honing his skills at the UAE's whitewater-slalom facility near the Oman border.
"It's double the length of a normal Olympic channel, making it perfect for training," he says.
Dawson describes his sport as "amazing", saying he loves the competing, training and travelling, "and as long as that passion continues I'll keep pushing".
He also holds a degree in accounting and finance and is a keen extreme skier, surfer, trail runner, and has competed in triathlons.
An entrepreneurial streak has helped him import kayaking kit, develop an adventure photography bent and form a video production company, his website profile says.
Dawson tells us he is excited about Rio, saying the games come at a perfect time in terms of him reaching his peak as a paddler.
"I am 100 per cent focused on doing what I can to put myself in a position to deliver a medal-winning performance in Rio."
