Big Read: Don't call her The Girl With the Golden Guns

Lisa Carrington says that what looks like a smile as she's racing is a grimace. Photo / Greg Bowker

She’s one of the smallest competitors in her field, but she’s a double world champion, an Olympic medallist ... and someone you wouldn’t want to arm-wrestle.

Don't call her The Girl With the Golden Guns. Aside from the Bond or Stieg Larrson connotations, talking about her guns is not Lisa Carrington's favourite pastime. But, judging by an unscientific poll in the newsroom, everybody notices them.

Her impressive arms and shoulders have powered her not only beyond her rivals but to become the most dominant sprint canoe racer in the world, female or male.

Carrington laughed and sighed, and laughed more when told that a sports-jockish Herald colleague reckoned she'd clean up all the men in the office in an arm wrestle.

"I guess it's body image, eh," she said. "I probably wouldn't show off my guns or, you know, show my muscles or anything like that but I guess that's what everyone picks up on."

Hard not to notice when her racing kit is a black singlet.

Exactly, she said.

Isn't she proud of them because they were hard earned?

Maybe, she said, "when I'm older or when they are gone - which will be good. Ha ha ha."

It's her genes, she said, and training (at maximum, three sessions in the gym a week and up to a dozen on the water).

"I'm naturally muscular anyway, and if I'm going to do that they are just gonna show a bit more, absolutely. But I don't intentionally go and do biceps curls. That's probably the exercise that, you know, I do not want to do biceps curls!"

People comment on her physique "all the time". Which shows what a sport she is. "It's like the last thing I want to talk about, ha ha ha." she said.

Her renovated Sunnynook bungalow has a print of a Kombi on the wall, a shiny coffeemaker with bells and whistles - "It's a legit machine" - on the bench but no real sign that it is the home of a world champion sportswoman.

She owns the house with her partner, "Bucky". Michael Buck is a water person too. Swimming, waterpolo, surf are his things. They met through the small surf-club scene. He works as an analyst for a bank. A serious job, said the photographer. Must be, said Carrington, firing up the coffee machine, "He wears a suit."

She wears jeans, fashionably torn, her hair in a plait, and has a European tan that has topped up her natural palette, which comes courtesy of her dad's Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki and Ngati Porou lineage.

She was raised in Opotiki, where she lived with her two older brothers and teacher parents in the schoolhouse before moving to the beach at Ohope. Canoeing brought her to Auckland in 2008.

"I've been here ever since, but I'm still not an Aucklander!" she told an interviewer two years ago.

She gets heaps from friends about becoming a Jafa, she said.

"I'm a Shore girl," they tell her. "I drive a Rav 4 and I drink flat whites."

It is strong long blacks at her house today, made on her mean machine because at the cafe we met at (The Cafe Lab, her choice, "because it's awesome") the roaster was roasting noisily, and there was no milk in Carrington's fridge on account of her recovering from having got home from Brazil at 4am the day before.

She'd holidayed in Italy after becoming a double world champion in Milan, a feat last achieved 18 years ago. Then she flew to Rio de Janeiro, host of the Olympics next year.

There are worries about weed and wind on the lake where canoeing and rowing will be held and about water quality and talk about how safe or not the city is. "So it was cool to go there and experience it for myself because I'd never been to South America." It was "different", she said but good. Canoeing has meant she's spent enough time in foreign lands not to be too phased.

They stayed locally, she said, in Ipanema.

Oh yeah, said I.

"Have you been to Rio?"

I know the song (The Girl from Ipanema).

"Ha ha ha," she hoots like a windgust, "A lot of people have told me about the song."

In Rio, she found what she likes to find - a great cafe. That's part of feeling at ease in a new place, finding somewhere where the food is good and safe and the right stuff, because food is fuel. A bout of food sickness can mean waiting four more years. As for the lake, the wind should be the same for everyone, she said, but the weed needed to be sorted out "because that's not fair at all".

An accidental tourist at 18, she found herself wearing the black singlet in the Czech Republic instead of a gown at the Whakatane High School ball.

"No one teaches you to be a tourist. As I've got older I've got to appreciate where I am, culture, people, those sorts of things. One thing we try to do is find the best local restaurant and cafe. I like eating at nice places. And I think you get in touch with their culture too when you find those places."

Carrington in action during the K1 200m final during the 2012 Olympics. Photo / Brett Phibbs

She loved Seville last year, and Munich in 2012, where she made friends of some locals while hanging out before going to London to win an Olympic gold medal. The Germans have even travelled to New Zealand to visit. That's a story about buying a German sim card and from there being directed to a beer garden where they could borrow bikes. She doesn't like beer but loved the beer garden and the food. "Pork knuckle!" she said before remembering she's sponsored by Beef and Lamb NZ.

At the cafe, she'd said "follow me" and I'd foolishly asked what colour her car was? You can't miss it, it has signage, she said. Then she drove by in a wagon with Beef and Lamb in huge letters.

Sponsors come with success, helped by a winning disposition.

The standard image of Carrington is of her powering across the water with what might be mistaken for a smile. It's a grimace, not a smile, said Carrington. She is trying to get to the finish without her arms falling off.

Her coach, Gordon Walker, thought Carrington might feel that we think it is easy for her because she wins and because of her beatific smile. And because when she won the 500-metre world title in Milan last month, daylight was second, and that rarely happens in sprint canoeing.

"Emphatic," said Walker, "the biggest winning margin since 2004."

On the subject of trying not to let her arms fall off, Carrington said: "It's the point where I guess you lose all strength and you just try to keep going in the last 15 seconds of the race."

She talked about paddler stuff, technique, adjusting how much water the blade catches, keeping stroke turnover high. It sounded like a pact with pain.

She talked, too, about the differences between her two events, which Walker said you could equate to the 400-metre and 800-metre running events on the track.

The shorter of her events, the explosive 200 metres is mostly anaerobic. That means busting your gut sort of without breathing. And the 500 metres is more aerobic (busting your gut while breathing).

Walker is a happy chap right now. He reckons the thing that would most scare her opponents is that they are not closing the gap and that Carrington has not finished improving.

Her advantage may be her power-to-weight ratio. At 1.68m and 53kg, she is one of the smallest but also one of the most powerful. She is a big motor pushing a lighter boat. Many of the girls she races are 10kg heavier.

She is favourite now for both Olympic events. "There is an expectation," said Carrington. "Suddenly when you do well, people think, now you can do this for us. I guess you don't sign up for that expectation and it's quite hard to understand how you make people feel ... but if I can inspire people to be better, or do sport or keep healthy or make better decisions in their life I think that's a pretty cool thing."

Was she lucky to discover her talent? "I wonder about that. I wonder whether it was luck that I just happened to come across kayaking. It's probably quite hard to find something that just clicks and suddenly you are the best in the world at it."

It was fast, but not sudden, of course. While friends were at that ball, she was at her first international event. Four years later, in 2011, she was K1 200m world champion, and the next year on the top step at the Olympics. She is now four-time world champion at the shorter race and won the gold in the longer event at her third attempt, after bronze and silver.

She thinks she handles the pressure of knowing you have to do well in that one race. Do people tip-toe around her before a race? "I hope not," she said. "You don't focus on what could happen. What if I fall out? Those thoughts bring that anxiety that worry."

She works on mental skills to help with that sort of pressure. "I've got a sports psych. He deals with all my crazy [stuff]." She sees him, she said for her personal development and that channels into her racing.

"It's too narrow if you just work on how can I race properly, how can I turn up with a good attitude. It's a lot bigger than that."

So Bucky benefits? "Yeah probably. Ha ha ha. He deals with me the most so he probably sees most of the bad."

He no doubt figured long ago that she is not only a winner, she's a keeper.