Kayaking: Lisa Carrington spearheads Kiwi team for world champs

Lisa Carrington. Photo / Getty Images

Double Olympic champion and seven-time world champion Lisa Carrington spearheads the New Zealand team set to compete in the 2018 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Montemor O Velho in Portugal.

Carrington leads the eight-strong Kiwi squad and takes on a demanding schedule of four events across the programme, which runs from August 23-27 (NZ time).

Selected for the K1 200m, she will be seeking a sixth straight world title in her pet event and also competes in the K1 500m – the discipline where she grabbed silver behind Volha Khudzenka of Belarus at the 2017 World Championships.

Carrington, 29, will reunite with Caitlin Ryan in K2 500m as the pair seek to defend their world title from 12 months ago. Both athletes have been in superb form on the 2018 World Cup circuit, with the North Shore-raised Ryan setting a world record K1 500m mark of 1:46.576 in Szeged, Hungary in May.

Joining Carrington and Ryan in the K4 500m are Aimee Fisher and Kayla Imrie.

The quartet last year won World Championship bronze and in May stormed to gold in the Szeged World Cup event.

Fisher, who won a World U23 K1 500m silver medal in Plovdiv last month has also been selected in the K2 200m where she will compete alongside Wellington-raised Imrie.

Rebecca Cole, a travelling reserve for the K4 500m, competes in the K1 1000m and Ryan also features in the K1 5000m event.

Gisborne-based Quaid Thompson has been rewarded for a strong fourth place finish in the K1 1000m at the World U23 Championships by winning selection in the K1 1000m and K1 5000m for his open Worlds debut.

Thompson, 20, the son of two-time Olympic champion, Alan Thompson, has benefited from a stint training in Europe this year with the top Hungarian paddlers.

Emerging para-canoeist Scott Martlew will be in action in the men's KL2 200m. The Christchurch-based amputee athlete, who competed at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, has recently been reclassified as a KL2 athlete and claimed a KL2 200m silver medal at the World Cup in Hungary in May.

Martlew is also selected alongside fellow Kiwi Peter Cowan in the VL3 200m event.

Canoe Racing NZ CEO Tom Ashley said the worlds were going to the exciting.

"The team has enjoyed some fantastic results on the World Cup circuit this year, although we acknowledge the World Championships are another step up in terms of the level and intensity of racing.

"On the other hand, our team is continuing to evolve and they are improving all the time."