Aimee Fisher wins three golds at canoe cup

SPORTS STAR: The 2016 Hawke's Bay Sportsperson of the Year, Aimee Fisher put herself in the running for next year's award with three World Cup wins in Portugal early today. PHOTO/FILE

Hawke's Bay canoeist Aimee Fisher has become a hot favourite for the 2018 Hawke's Bay Sportsperson of the Year Award by winning three canoe sprint World Cup titles just a day after the end of her reign as the 2016 award winner.

She and Kiwi kayak queen Lisa Carrington paired to win the K2 200-metres and 500m titles within an hour in Portugal overnight (NZST) and then join fellow-Olympians Caitlin Ryan and Kayla Imrie in a K4 500m which on top of Ryan's K1 500m delivered New Zealand's best-ever World Cup canoeing haul.

One of a New Zealand team team of eight, and having won her first New Zealand K1 200m title in Carrington's absence at the national championships on Lake Karapiro in February, and now with four Woirld Cup golds, after a successful World Cup K4 debut in Portugal in 2015, the 22-year-old Fisher will be after more glory in the second and final World Cup round in Hungary next weekend, before starting preparations for the World Championships in the Czech Republic on August 23-27.

The biggest praise came from Carrington who said the pair had gelled from the moment they first boated together.

"Aimee's got some incredible boat stills, so when we got in we gelled pretty quickly," said Carrington. "We're at an incredible level, but it's early days."

"I haven't paddled a K2 at this level since London (the 2012 Olympics), so it's been amazing to be here on trop of the podium."

"To come home with four gold medals is just a dream run," said Hastings-born Fisher, a former pupil of Karamu High School. "The sport's just growing so much and it's pretty crazy to think it was back in 2015 that we won our first gold medal in the K4 here."

Carrington and Fisher were 0.689secs clear of Portugal's Joana Vasconcelos and Francisca Laia in the K2 200m final, with Imrie and Briar McLeely fourth behind Ukraine's Anastasiia Todorova and Anastasiya Horlova.

They barely had time to dry off, accept their medals and stand for the national anthem before they were straight back in action, powering down the Montemor-o-Velho course to win the K2 500m in 1m 41.706s.