Dame Lisa Carrington of New Zealand wins gold in the women’s K1 500m gold medal final at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical. Photo / Photosport
Dame Lisa Carrington of New Zealand wins gold in the women’s K1 500m gold medal final at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical. Photo / Photosport
Michael Burgess in Paris
Around the media centre at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, seasoned kayaking journalists were shaking their heads.
The experts – those who cover the sport regularly – couldn’t quite believe what they had seen. One of them summed it up best, saying, “That shouldn’t happen in a K2 final at the Olympics”.
He was referring to the astonishing performance by Dame Lisa Carrington and Alicia Hoskin, who blitzed the best combinations in the world on Friday. They won by almost two boat lengths, crossing the line more than two seconds ahead of the Hungarian crew who claimed silver.
Just when you thought you had seen it all, this was another remarkable chapter of Carrington’s career. It also, surely, confirmed that Carrington is our greatest Olympian of all time.
It was always hard to look beyond Peter Snell, winning the 800m in Rome, then backing it up with the 800m-1500m double in 1964, a feat that still inspires awe all those decades on, in two of the biggest Olympic events.
But now we have to, especially after her brilliant win in the K1 500m on Saturday, where she outlasted Hungarian powerhouse Tamara Csipes after the European had been in the lead at the halfway mark.
There are other great names – Todd, Ferguson, Adams, Bond, Loader, Drysdale, MacDonald – but nothing quite like this.
Dame Lisa Carrington celebrates victory in the women's K2 sprint heats. Photo / Photosport
Obviously, the statistics are overwhelming. Eight gold medals, nine medals in total.
Since her Games debut in London, Carrington has been involved in almost a third of the golds collected by New Zealand in that period. Even across our entire summer Olympics history, dating back to 1920, Carrington’s haul equates to 12% of the total visits to the top of the podium.
She’s also part of a new pantheon on an international level, joining Usain Bolt, Simone Biles, and Michael Phelps as the only athletes to collect three or more golds at multiple Olympics this century.
Then there is the longevity. Carrington was 23 at her first Olympics and is still the benchmark, 12 years later.
But perhaps the most notable thing over the past few days is her ability to make good teams great. Carrington has long been recognised as the greatest solo kayaker of all time; now there is a compelling argument that she is one of the best team boat paddlers in history.
Hoskin is an accomplished athlete, as are youngsters Olivia Brett and Tara Vaughan, who have dedicated themselves to a gruelling programme over the last few years. But Carrington is the special sauce; the one who sets the tone at training and in the gym, the one who sets the pace off the start line and the one who pulls the boat to the finish.
She has also had to deal with incredible pressure because her achievements are almost taken for granted.
Carrington has contested 10 Olympic kayaking events since 2012. Her record? Eight golds, one bronze, one fourth (the K4 500m in Tokyo). There haven’t been the ups and downs of other big names from this country, which can make success seem even sweeter.
She told the Herald earlier this year that the external expectation could be difficult but it is something she has “learned to accept”.
Carrington also took the brave decision to continue after Tokyo. That seemed like a peak – how could you top three golds – and there were some mutterings at the time that she was risking her legacy, in case the outputs weren’t quite the same in Paris.
But Carrington has never been completely defined by results. She simply loves the sport, the training, the races and the challenge of constant improvement. Her barometer is performance and everything flows from there, as happened again on Friday.
“We just had a plan,” explained Carrington. “We stuck to our strategy, our strengths. But it was just amazing that we could pull out that performance and under pressure, meeting the moment and making sure that we did everything we could to make it the best race possible.”
“It’s so special to be a part of that with Alicia and her desire to want to keep improving, wanting to paddle better. There’s no perfect. But there’s always something you can do more of and the love of paddling that Alicia has is awesome to be a part of.”
“So when we’re out there, we’re just like, you know what? It’s just us enjoying it. All we are passionate about is the paddling and doing it together. So by keeping that mindset, it helped us lean into the pressure. So crossing the line, it wasn’t relief, or ‘wow we did it’. It was more like, ‘that’s so cool just to do it together’.”
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist since 2005, winning several national awards and covering Olympics’, Fifa World Cups and America’s Cup campaigns. A football aficionado, Burgess will never forget the noise that greeted Rory Fallon’s goal against Bahrain in Wellington in 2009.
