Carrington doubles up
A day after smashing all opposition in her K1 200m final, Lisa Carrington did the same in her less favoured K1 500m event at the world championships last night.
The Kiwi blitzed the start, putting a boat length on the nine-woman field inside the opening 150m and then maintaining that advantage to the finish to earn her second gold of the regatta at Szeged, Hungary.
She clocked 1m 55.76s to win by 1.63s. Volha Khudzenka of Belarus, who won gold in the K2 200m and 500m at these world championships, was second in 1m 57.39.
Hungary’s Danuta Kozak, a twotime Olympic gold medallist and the defending world champion in this event, was third in 1m 58.01s.
Carrington donwplayed her dominance in her post-race interview on the Szeged pontoon.
When told she made it look easy, she replied: “I don’t know about that. There was a lot of hurt just trying to keep the other girls off.”
Carrington won the K1 200m final by almost 2s on Saturday night in an unsurprising result given it was her seventh straight world title over the distance. She claimed gold over 200m at the last two Olympics and is unbeaten in the event for seven years.
Her record in the K1 500m is nowhere near as dominant. She earned world championship silver in the event the past two years after taking gold in 2015 and bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Her convincing victories over both distances leave the 30-year-old well placed to become the first New Zealander to win gold at three consecutive Olympics at next year’s Tokyo Games.
Carrington was back on the water 90 minutes later with Aimee Fisher, Caitlin Ryan and Kayla Imrie for the K4 500m final. The Kiwi quartet were second early on and third at the halfway mark before fading to fourth behind Hungary, Belarus and Poland, 2.44s behind the winners.
New Zealand were runners-up by just 0.01s in the K4 500m final last year and earned bronze in 2017.