Despite her status and achievements, Dame Lisa Carrington remains humble and grounded, more comfortable discussing teammates or deflecting praise on to coaches and support staff. Yet she is undeniably New Zealand’s most successful Olympian and one of our greatest athletes. Earlier this year, Carrington sat down with Michael
Paris 2024 Olympics: Dame Lisa Carrington reflects on 15 years of remarkable international success
Dame Lisa Carrington, pictured at the New Zealand Olympic women's canoe sprint team naming at Lake Pupuke at Milford in April. Photo / Ben Dickens
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This was the biggest one for me; the most pivotal, important moment of my career. Originally, I wasn’t selected to race the K1 200. But I wanted to, so I asked if I could. I already had to race the K2 and the K4 at that event and I was 21 at the time and that is quite demanding.
Back then they were trying to figure out what we could do in the team boats, which were seen as an outside chance of qualifying for the 2012 Olympics but we didn’t have the knowledge or the capacity to go that well. Gordon Walker had started coaching us and he had to convince the selectors that I should be allowed to compete in the K1; right up until that point, there was no push for us individually.
By winning this final, I locked in my K1 200 spot for the world championships. If I hadn’t performed in Duisburg, I wouldn’t have then gone on to race at the worlds, win and gone on to the Olympics. It was one of those moments. There was no awareness here around what was needed, no history of what K1 200 paddling should be. So even though I might have shown promise, it wasn’t really recognised, so the selectors had to be persuaded.
August 2011: Canoe Sprint World Championships, Szeged, Hungary
Still a relative novice, Carrington didn’t have a world ranking in the solo event ahead of this regatta. She was the least experienced paddler in the final, against world and Olympic medallists, but won by almost half a second. Carrington became the first Kiwi female to claim a world championship title and our first gold medallist at this level since Ben Fouhy in 2003.
This meant a lot. I felt quite lucky, if I look back, and you just don’t know what you don’t know. Getting that result helped us become a priority, which meant we got more support to do the things that were best for performance and training.
Conditions were great that day, flat and calm. But I’ll never forget, just before we were lining up into the gate, I remember thinking I was absolutely terrified. There were thousands of people watching and it was my first individual world championships. All that pressure and everything; it was nerve-wracking. But at that moment I passed one of the Aussie girls, who I got along well with and I remember saying ‘Have a good race’. And then it was ‘Okay, I can talk, it’s not bad. Someone else is out here with me’.
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It was a good performance. I wasn’t the quickest over the first 50... but I could just maintain speed better and charge through the middle of the race. It was surprising; I knew I was the fastest qualifier going in but until you do it, you never know if you can. A lot of the nerves came from knowing that I could actually win. So when I crossed the line, it’s not relief that it’s over, it’s more ‘Wow, that was a lot of pressure that has now all gone. It’s all done’.
May 2012: Canoe Sprint World Cup, Duisburg, Germany
This was the first time Carrington faced Hungarian legend Natasa Dusev-Janics, who had won three consecutive world championship golds (2007, 2009, 2010) over the shorter sprint distance before taking time out to start a family. In an epic battle, Janics prevailed by nine-hundredths of a second, crossing in 40.751s compared with Carrington’s 40.847s. It remains the last time Carrington has been beaten in a semifinal or final over the K1 200m distance.
I knew it would be a great race against her. I took away confidence and some technical stuff. We were driving back from that regatta and I was chatting to Gordy and I remember saying, ‘I think I over-rated it’, instead of putting in good, connected strokes.
From that point, I had more awareness around what it was going to take to go fast. Technically, I didn’t paddle that race super well but by doing that it exposed what wasn’t the way to do it. It was a great experience to take into the next three months of training before the Olympics.
August 2012: London Olympics, Great Britain
Carrington was the fastest qualifier for the K1 200m final, raced at Eton Dorney in front of almost 30,000 people, though three-time Olympic champion Dusev-Janics was favoured with many neutrals. With her family with her in London, Carrington belied any nerves with an authoritative performance. It was the first Olympic triumph for Kiwi kayaking since 1988.
Before the race, I was definitely not as nervous as some other times since. I remember waking up at 4am, then watching television to try and keep myself distracted.
It was a massive crowd, the biggest of my career. Before the starter gun, they had this heartbeat playing over the loudspeaker. It was measuring your heartbeat; I guess it was for the spectators, but it was annoying; I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that is incredibly distracting’. But I said to myself, ‘Okay, just calm down’.
There was a headwind, so it felt much longer. I wasn’t in the lead until the last part of the race. I just remember thinking over that final 50 metres, all I wanted to do was win a gold medal. Especially knowing that you only get one opportunity every four years, if you even make it to that point. So it was a relief crossing the line but also like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I just did that. I’ve got this thing that all these other amazing athletes have as well’. It took a while to get my head around that.
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August 2015: Canoe Sprint World Championships, Milan, Italy
After the London Olympic cycle was over, Carrington began to compete in the K1 500m.
Getting a K1 500 bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships gave me the motivation to believe I was good enough over that distance. With this performance, I probably didn’t realise it was as good as it was until I did it. It was probably the best strategically that I had paddled in the K1 500 up until then and the first one I had really nailed. It took me a wee while to nail it again!
The 500 has always been a scary event for me. You need to go all-in from the first stroke and it is a long way to go all-in. This was the first time I realised that I could really win over that distance.
August 2016: Rio Olympics, Brazil
Carrington arrived in Brazil as an unbackable favourite in the K1 200m. She had been unbeaten in that event since London, though the overwhelming expectation was difficult to deal with for the 27-year-old. But she handled it, winning a tight K1 200m final with a trademark burst from the halfway mark before claiming bronze in the K1 500m, just 0.12s ahead of the fourth-placed finisher, to become only the eighth New Zealander to claim multiple medals at a single Games.
When I reflect on Rio, there were heaps and heaps of nerves. I would have loved to have had more confidence going in but you only know how to deal with the pressure when you have been through it. I can only see the gaps now, looking back at the moment. It would have been hard to expect myself at that time to embrace the nerves and the pressure because at that moment it was probably at its greatest for me.
I would have loved to have felt freer but it is the learning of what it means to be the best and trying to repeat. When you are the reigning Olympic champion and world champion, there is a lot on your shoulders.
It was a really awesome event but I had a lot of pressure in that year and I was feeling absolutely ill leading into those races. I knew that I could do it but there was so much expectation. What if I don’t do it? What will people think? All that external stuff... what people might think if I don’t do well. That was quite a big one; not that I would have liked to admit it at the time and I probably didn’t realise it was a big thing holding me back a bit.
August 2017: Canoe Sprint World Championships, Racice, Czech Republic
This was the first year where I raced all four events [K1 200m, K1 500m, K2 500m and K4 500m]. It was a tough world championships but from there, there was a goal in mind to do all four in Tokyo.
I wasn’t planning to do the K2 in 2017 but ended up paddling with Caitlin [Ryan] and we went really well together. I knew that by overworking or challenging myself hugely at this stage, it would help me manage what the Olympics is because the Games are tougher than any other event you come across.
August 2019: Canoe Sprint World Championships, Szeged, Hungary
Carrington managed her most emphatic performance to date over the longer K1 500m distance, ahead by a boat length after 150m and winning by almost two seconds over a strong field, including two-time Olympic champion Danuta Kozak.
There was a howling headwind in the final, so this race felt a lot longer. It made it tough but the goal was just to approach it the same. I was happy that year being able to really express my speed and do the race that I always thought I could do. It takes courage to go hammer and tong, straight off when the gun goes but I left it all out there.
August 2021: 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan
Carrington had an extended build-up into Tokyo, after the postponement of the Games in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Canoe Racing New Zealand organised some internal regattas but Carrington hadn’t competed internationally for almost two years by the time she took to the water in the Japanese capital.
Every single race I did in Tokyo was important from the heat to the final, first day to the last day; absolutely everything mattered. And looking back it went so quick.
K1 200m: It wasn’t necessarily my best race but I knew that it was challenging conditions. It was really windy and you got a bit of bounce-back from the walls around the stadium. That made it tricky and it requires a lot of skill. In a way it helped me for the rest of the campaign to not put in everything because I wasn’t able to fully express my physicality, as the conditions required a bit more finesse and technique to keep the boat moving.
K2 500m: This came just an hour after my K1 200 final. The wind had calmed down a bit. Not expressing everything in the K1 meant that I had a good amount of energy and it was such a wicked race to do. When you look back at being the first team boat that any Kiwi females had won at the Olympics it was like: this is the start of something. And doing it with Caitlin made it special to be able to share that.
We had paddled fast together before this event but you can’t rely on that, you can’t always pull out that special moment for the Olympics. There is so much pressure so the expectation to do that is quite high. So for us to cross the line together – that was pretty special.
K1 500m final: I was getting to the limit of my energy, I could start to feel the week of racing in that final. We raced just 90 minutes before, in the semifinals, and only the top two from each went through. It is so tough; I would have put in almost 100%, you just had to, to make it.
What sticks in my mind from that final is that I was the most free at that point. I was just prepared to give everything, which is all I can ask for. That is probably the hardest thing about performing and racing. To be able to be on the start line knowing that you are going to go all-in, no distractions, just 100% in that moment. So that final was great. I was there; I wanted to be there and I just wanted to race.
August 2023: Canoe Sprint World Championships, Duisburg, Germany
Carrington was the anchor of a young K4 500m crew that produced a superlative performance, leading from start to finish to stun the traditional heavyweight nations. They were the first New Zealand quartet to take gold at this level, something that even eluded some of the legendary names in the 1980s.
This was right up there for me because we were going against the odds. With that K4 – we put everything into that to make it that way. It was so prepared, you had to do so much for it to happen. There was much more awareness about what it took than in the early days and we put the work in.
With four people, it’s a lot more challenging to get on the same page. Knowing what to do at certain times; it’s almost like a synchronised dance, everyone has to be doing their part and you have to know what they are doing. If you do something slightly wrong, it really impacts the whole boat.
In the final, maybe the other boats were distracted, thinking, what is New Zealand doing there [up front]? They are not supposed to be there. That can be the impact of crews around you, even though you are all in your own lanes. Potentially if they had stuck to their race plan, they would have done better. We were able to stick to the task.
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.
