Just how far Lisa Carrington has travelled in her sport will become apparent tonight.
The Olympic and multiple world champion lines up in the K1 500m final at the world kayaking championships in Milan. She has dominated the K1 200m sprint division since 2011, the year before she won the Olympic gold medal in London. Carrington has now set her sights on an Olympic double in Rio next year.
Should she win tonight, it will be further proof that, 11 months out from the Rio Games, the Auckland-based Bay of Plenty paddler is firmly on track for a historic achievement. Only Peter Snell (1964), Ian Ferguson, Paul MacDonald and Alan Thompson (1984) and Danyon Loader (1996) have won two or more gold medals at the same Olympics. Carrington was third in the 500m final at each of the past two world champs and is the dominant women's paddler.
She qualified second quickest out of the heats, behind only Belarusian Volha Khudzenka, and even though she shaved five seconds off in her semifinal it was still only good enough for fourth best into the final. Hungary's Anna Karasz was best in 1m 48.113; Britain's Rachel Cawthorn was second fastest and China's Yu Zhou third best ahead of Carrington's 1:49.407.
The championships double as the Olympic qualifying regatta. That is likely to be the least of Carrington's problems as she eyes a spectacular double.
