Tauranga's Mike Dawson is on top of the world after bagging extreme kayaking's holy grail yesterday in a little town in Northern Italy.
Dawson, 25, the seven-times national K1 whitewater champion, won the multi-discipline freeriding world title at the Teva Outdoor Extreme Games, with the two-day event regarded as one ofthe biggest races internationally in whitewater.
In a double whammy for the region's talent-laden kayaking stocks, Rotorua's Sam Sutton picked up the silver behind Dawson, who was twice part of the whitewater kayaking world champion New Zealand team and a silver medalist at the Sickline world championship two years ago.
The kayak world championship freeride was split into four disciplines, with the scores of individual races added together to find the overall winner.
Dawson won the first race, an individual long distance over a 3km course on the Valchiusella River described as "technically challenging and demanding extreme fitness".
Lasko Honza from the Czech Republic was second, with Sutton third.
Dawson backed up his opening win with gold in the slalom, with each kayaker getting two runs through the mountain town of Ivrea, where the river runs alongside the streets, creating a spectacular scene with thousands on the embankment.
Dawson made it three-from-three in the individual sprint race through Ivrea, negotiating two runs in atrocious conditions with the best counting. he held off hard-charging Italian Ramazza Michele and Russian Egor Voskoynikov, with Sutton sixth.
Weighed down by three golds, Dawson went into the final discipline, the crash-and-bash kayak cross, as the hot favourite for the world title, although any of the top five in the standings had a shot at the overall freeride title.
Kayak cross sees paddlers fight it out in a sudden-death duel, with the loser eliminated and the winner advancing to the next round. Michele triumphed on his home river, just ahead of Dawson with Sutton's third place boosting him into second overall, just ahead of Michele.
