The sporting action begins in just a few days, ahead of the opening ceremony on Saturday morning. Video / NZ Herald
Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom
In the lead up to the Paris Olympics, Suzanne McFadden talks to five-time Olympian Luuka Jones about her journey.
In 2008, a naive but intrepid 19-year-old from Tauranga named Luuka Jones became the first Kiwi woman to race in canoe slalom at an Olympics. Eight years later, she became New Zealand’s first canoe slalom medallist, winning silver in Rio.
Paris will be the 35-year-old’s fifth Olympic Games – up there with Dame Valerie Adams, Barbara Kendall, Ali Riley and Emma Twigg.
Jones’ inclusion in her first Olympic team happened quickly… and late. She’d qualified a New Zealand boat through Oceania, but made it to Beijing by the skin of her teeth - finishing 16th nation at the last chance World Cup in Slovenia.
“It was a bit of chance, but having moved to Nottingham to train with the British team, I created those chances,” she says.
Surrounded by her Kiwi sporting heroes, and talking to them in the Beijing Olympic village, was “like a fairytale”. Olympic gold medallists Hamish Carter and Sarah Ulmer took her to lunch in the food hall and she had a photo with tennis megastar Rafael Nadal.
“But I was more blown away by Dame Valerie Adams making me a hot chocolate,” she says. “I cried when I left Beijing, because it was such an incredible experience.
“Those Games made me determined to get better, and work hard to become a fulltime athlete. And they also opened some doors; after that, I was supported by a sports academy in Rotorua and that was a game-changer.”
Until then she had her Scottish flatmate writing her training programmes (he won Olympic gold four years later). “And my friend Lizzie, who paddled for Great Britain, took me to the gym and taught me how to do lifts. I was very raw and naive. But it was the beginning of things.”
Result: 21st in K1 canoe slalom
Luuka Jones training at Wero White Water Park. Photo / Alan Lee / Photosport
Second Olympics: London 2012
In the four years between Beijing and London, Jones tried to be professional and “do everything in line with what I thought a high-performance athlete would do”. But she was also travelling around Europe in cars that would break down, hitching over mountains and sleeping on couches.
“It was really frustrating, because the reality was we were saving up as much money as we could in the off-season. And I had a $10,000 loan, and my credit card was maxed out,” she says.
“I was so grateful the Waiariki Polytechnic helped me out a lot. At the same time, my results improved and I made a considerable leap towards the next level.”
By her second Olympics, Jones had a better idea of what she was trying to achieve, while still being realistic. “I wasn’t in a position to win a medal, but I was trying to make the final. I was older, and I was able to really soak up the experience.
“London had the best village, with really nice apartments and an outdoor barbecue area where the NZ team got together. The Brits all got behind the Games and the grandstands were packed. And my flatmate won gold - so we went to high-end parties.”
She didn’t reach her goal - getting knocked out in the semifinals - but she reckons that’s probably where she sat in the slalom world right then.
Jones returned from the London Games, and had one of the best summers of her life. But she was also looking to wrap up her international kayaking career.
“I wanted to be a high performance athlete, but without support, I couldn’t step up to that next level. It’s so much effort, so much investment, that being a realist, I thought ‘This is probably it’,” she says.
Then the new manager of the Academy of Sport at Waiariki had links with rowing and helped to get Jones and fellow canoe slalom Olympian Mike Dawson grants from High Performance Sport NZ for a year. “I went from not much support to having this whole team of high performance personnel, a coach, everything. It was huge,” she says.
But the pressure that came with it was also overwhelming: “When you finally get the support, you feel you need to prove you’re worthy of it. So those first World Cups that year were disastrous.”
Her coach, Campbell Walsh, brought her back to the basics. “I’d learned a lot of bad habits, so I had to strip back my entire technique, and even change my philosophy on the sport, and build back up again,” Jones says.
Wanting to learn to be “a good athlete”, she moved in with three Olympic rowers - Emma Twigg, Rebecca Scown and Lucy Spoors - in Cambridge.
Ranked 22 in the world going into the Rio Games, Jones was an underdog. “Yet I very much believed a medal was possible for me,” she says. “I was paddling well, I was in good shape.
“Though to be honest, I look back on Rio through rose-tinted glasses. I read through my old training diary and see lots of, ‘Awful session’, ‘Paddling really badly’. But I still came in with a lot of confidence.”
Rio 2016 silver medallist Luuka Jones celebrates after becoming the first Kiwi to win an Olympic medal in canoe slalom. Photo / Photosport
Jones had done mental work around “being in the moment”, working with her campaign manager Caroline Brisebois, and her team on preparing for every scenario at the Olympics. “A lot can be thrown at you, and if you have a really strong plan and you’re adaptable, that’s a really good space to be in.”
Dawson and Jones spent 13 weeks in Rio leading into the Games, to acclimatise to a challenging environment. “One of my philosophies is to embed myself in the Olympic environment and embrace that culture, and Rio really felt like home for me. That was my secret weapon as well,” Jones says.
Jones went into the Olympic K1 final as the slowest paddler, but rose to the occasion to win silver. “When you win an Olympic medal, it’s wild. I wasn’t on the radar, so overnight you’re noticed,” she says. “There are all these events to go to, and new opportunities that pop up.”
“Before Rio, there was no secure future for our sport, so part of my motivation was to put slalom on the map - win a medal so more people in the sport in New Zealand could benefit.”
She returned home to a parade through Tauranga, with the Olympic sailing medallists. “It was so cool. I went into schools and shared my story and got to really connect with people.”
Result: Silver medal in K1 canoe slalom
Fourth Olympics: Tokyo 2020 (in 2021)
By now, Auckland had the Wero whitewater park, and multiple Kiwi canoe slalom athletes had funding support.
Jones won K1 bronze at the 2019 world championships, and was happy with her form. Then New Zealand went into a nationwide Covid lockdown and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were delayed a year. “When we had to really fight to get to Europe before the Olympics in 2021,” she says.
Jones struggled with the pressure of being an Olympic medallist. “I couldn’t stop thinking about standing on top of the podium with a gold medal. It consumed me, and I didn’t enjoy a lot of that campaign,” she admits. “I was very stressed and angry on the water.
“I probably could have dealt with the pressure in different ways, but I was very much like ‘Kayaking is who I am and what I do’, and I didn’t have perspective.”
Competing before grandstands with no crowds was “anti-climactic”, and the team element of the Games was missing. “Everyone was in their own bubble, being careful and there were no communal spaces. At other Games, I thrived off being part of a much bigger team,” Jones says.
After the disappointment of finishing sixth in the K1 at Tokyo, Jones came to appreciate that although winning a medal made her feel worthy, not winning one five years later didn’t change her life. “I went back to Europe and enjoyed the season with this weight off my shoulders,” she says, “and it made me realise it’s not a life or death event.”
Result: 6th in K1 canoe slalom; 13th in C1 canoe slalom.
Fifth Olympics: Paris 2024
Within a month of Tokyo, Jones decided to go for a fifth Olympics, but in a class making its debut: the extreme slalom, aka kayak cross. A demolition derby in plastic boats.
But long Covid pummelled Jones in 2022 - forcing her to return home from Europe and miss a year of competition.
“Then once I started coming back, I got a kidney infection, I hurt my neck and couldn’t paddle for a couple of weeks, then I got Covid again,” she says. “It was so frustrating.”
But that only made her prouder of her comeback late last year, reaching the kayak cross final at the world champs, before winning in Paris at the Olympic test event.
“It took so much work, willpower and belief to prove I was back. There were many moments of ‘Should I still be doing this? Is this a sign to stop?’,” she says. “But I believe there’s an opportunity in everything.” She spent more time with her now-fiance Brendan, who she’d just met. And that year off gave her some perspective.
In Tokyo, she stopped believing in herself and trusting her own decisions. So she decided to take more ownership of her programme. “I’m now writing my own training programmes and leading my own campaign. You can only do that with a strong team around you, who support me and challenge me,” Jones says.
Her new coach, American Michal Smolen (who was fifth in the men’s K1 in Tokyo), supports her decision.
“You can get so caught up in the result, and if you’re not enjoying it, then it seems such a waste. You can do both - focus on performance and on enjoying being surrounded by like-minded people, being out on the water every day, going to these amazing places,” says Jones, who’s also been working as media manager for Table Tennis NZ.
“So I’m working on being grateful for what I have and where I’m at.”
She still gets a thrill receiving the Olympic uniform and making the most of the Olympic village. “I think we’ll have a sense of normality again - sitting on the start line, looking up at the packed grandstands. It’s such an incredible place to be, I really want to soak that up.”
The kayak cross is like a nod to Jones’ special upbringing on the Wairoa River, racing in plastic kayaks and learning to Eskimo roll (part of her new event).
“I’m at the end of my career, and it still feels not that long since I began. But at the same time, I’ve done a lot and been to a lot of places,” she says. “It would be a dream to finish on a high in Paris.”
And she promises to make a hot chocolate for another first-time Kiwi OIympian in the village.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.
