A season that started on the West Coast of New Zealand has turned to Rio gold for British kayaker Joe Clarke.
Clarke won the K1 canoe slalom crown at the at the Whitewater Stadium in Deodoro X-Park on Wednesday in a time of 88.53 seconds, ahead of Peter Kauzer (Slovenia) and Jiri Prskavec (Czech Republic), with Tauranga's Mike Dawson finishing 10th in 93.07.
Earlier this year, Clarke and Dawson launched their Olympic campaign with an extreme training camp deep in the Southern Alps, recreating a slalom course on the Whataroa River south of Hokitika.
They helicoptered into a remote gorge, amid the giant boils and schist boulders of the grade-5 Grand Finale rapid, 11km up from Whataroa's main street and set up slalom gates with home-made plastic poles and twine.
The aim was to recreate the mental pressures they would both face in Rio, substituting the massive crowd noise and public expectation for the roar of the glacier-fed rapids and the crucial life-and-death moves that needed to be made.