New Zealand canoe/kayak Olympic and world champion Lisa Carrington at a training session on Lake Pupuke. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Kayak champion Lisa Carrington is considering tackling three disciplines at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
With three Olympics medals to her name - back-to-back K1 200m sprint crowns, and bronze in the K1 500m in Rio last year - Carrington wants to explore whether chasing success in three events at the
same Olympics is viable. It certainly doesn't guarantee three medals in 2020 but given her record, and that she'll still be in her prime, only a fool would discount the prospect.
The only New Zealander to have won three medals of any colour at one Games was another paddler, Ian Ferguson, who bagged golds in the K1 500m, K2 500m with Paul MacDonald and as part of the winning K4 1000m quartet at Los Angeles in 1984. Carrington is already one of just 12 athletes to have won three or more Olympic medals, but she's in search of more challenges.
"I'd love to be able to do three," Carrington said. I'll see how it goes but it would be really good to test it at some stage."
Part of the issue is the scheduling of events at the Olympics. Hungarian multi-Olympic medallist Danuta Kozak won the K1 500m, K2 500m and K4 500m at the Rio Olympics. But Carrington denied she'd given that much thought in terms of a template for how she might approach it.
