Lisa Carrington, an absolute legend: she reached 15 world titles and will chase new records in Paris

By dint of successive and unprecedented triumphs, Lisa Carrington, the athlete who in Tokyo 2020 integrated the select group of three-time Olympic champions in the same Game, achieved her 15th world title to continue amplifying her glorious career and occupying an increasingly important space in the history of New Zealand sports.

With three new medals to her credit, all gold medals, the Duisburg 2023 Calm Water Canoeing World Championship, which ended last Sunday, showed her as one of the most successful sailors, to the point that she participated in all the achievements of her delegation and won, on her own, the same amount as Germany, Spain, Canada and China.

In chronological order and also of relevance, the victory in the K4 500 was the most celebrated because it was the first in the race in the history of her country. Together with Alicia Hoskin, Olivia Brett and Tara Vaughan, she led the New Zealand boat, reached the finish line almost a second before the Polish one, third in Tokyo, and the Spanish one to guarantee one of the 10 places for Paris 2024. “Over many years, we have learned a lot as K4. I think it was necessary to have a lot of faith and break mental models,” Carrington explained after leading the unprecedented feat.

Less than 24 hours later, the 34-year-old successfully defended the crown and placed the fourth K1,500 world trophy in her case. In turn, it sealed a new ticket to the next Olympic Games for New Zealand, in which retaining the throne will be their great objective. Carrington, who after the test noticed the additional mental difficulty of winning the previous day, had already achieved glory in Milan 2015, Szeged 2019 and Halifax 2022.

The fifteenth world championship came on the last day of competition in a specialty that was excluded from the Paris 2024 program and that places her as three-time Olympic champion and now ninth world champion. The overwhelming hegemony in the K1 200 was reconfirmed by winning more than one kayak away over Yale Steinepreis from Australia and Dominika Putto from Poland.

With a total of 14 medals (three gold, five silver and six bronze), the host Germany added just a third place more than Spain and dominated the medal table in Duisburg. However, the most decorated athlete in the World Championship came from Canada: Katie Vincent won three gold medals -C1 500, C1 5,000 and C2 500 mixed- and one bronze medal, in C2 500.