Lisa Carrington of New Zealand racing in the semi-final of the women's K1 500m event at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo / Getty Images.
This has been a great sporting year for New Zealand. Michael Brown looks back on the numerous elite sportsmen and women who won world titles in 2015.
Canoe sprint
K1 200m & K1 500m
Lisa Carrington
We have come to expect Carrington to dominate the K1 200m - she's been nearly unbeatable over this distance since the London Olympics - but her win in the longer K1 500m was a pleasant surprise. Making it even more pleasing is the fact it's an Olympic event, raising the possibility the Kiwi paddler could snare two golds in Rio next year.
Cycling road
Individual time trial
Linda Villumsen
Villumsen had come close before, finishing second twice (2013 and 2011) and third three times (2012, 2010 and 2009) in the time trial world championships, but occupied top spot this year in Virginia with a win by less than three seconds on the 29.9km course. It almost cost the Danish-born Villumsen her job. Her trade team, UnitedHealthCare, considered dropping her for riding her team-issue New Zealand frame instead of her normal bike. The New Zealand bike allowed her to get
much lower.
Cycling track
Team pursuit
New Zealand men
Sports officials often like to prattle on about how the future looks rosy but, in the case of the men's team pursuit, this assessment is genuine. The New Zealand squad lost a bit of quality beef after London, including Jesse Sergent and Sam Bewley, and went to this year's track cycling world championships with 'realistic' expectations. What made this win remarkable was the fact it was achieved by a quartet with an average age of just 20, including 18-year-old Regan Gough who was pitched into the gold-medal ride after the experienced Marc Ryan succumbed to a back injury. They edged Great Britain in a thrilling final by half a second over the 4000m distance and their time of 3m 54.088s also smashed the national record by more than a second-and-a-half.
Motorsport
World endurance championship
Brendon Hartley
Unlike some sports (think swimming or athletics), motorsport doesn't have many world titles. Six, in fact. A Kiwi owns one of them. New Zealand's Brendon Hartley joined team-mates Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard to win the world endurance championship in Bahrain last month to become Porsche's first world endurance champions since 1986. They finished the last race in Bahrain in fifth after six hours - Hartley did two stints behind the wheel - to claim the world title by five points. It rounded out a successful year in Kiwi motorsport, given Earl Bamber won Le Mans (24 Hour race), Scott Dixon claimed his fourth IndyCar championship, Mitch Evans and Richie Stanaway earned race wins in GP2 and Hayden Paddon won a World Rally Championship podium spot at Sardinia.
Ocean racing
Kayaking
Teneale Hatton
Kayaking in this country tends to be dominated by Lisa Carrington, and for good reason (see above), but Teneale Hatton has won six world titles. Her latest was this year's world ocean racing championships in Tahiti. Hatton completed the gruelling 34km course in 2 hours 15 minutes 58.68 seconds, 31 seconds ahead of American Michele Eray, as she took advantage of the 1m-2m swells and south-easterly trade-winds (or Mara'amu as it is known locally). The 25-year-old was taking a year out from canoe sprint paddling and will now switch her attentions to trying to qualify for
next year's Rio Olympics.
Paralympic sports
Five Paralympic athletes won world championships across 11 events in 2015, headed by swimmers Mary Fisher (women's 100m backstroke S11, 100m freestyle S11 and 200m
IM SM11), Sophie Pascoe (women's 200m individual medley SM10, 100m butterfly S10 and 100m freestyle S10) and Nikita Howarth (women's 50m butterfly S7 and 200m IM SM7). Corey Peters backed it up with victory in the men's downhill sitting category at the IPC alpine skiing world championships in Canada - the first time a New Zealander had won an IPC world title in the downhill discipline - and men's super-G sitting and para-cyclists Emma
Foy and Laura Thompson added another in the women's B 3km
pursuit (track).
Rowing
Women's double sculls
Eve Macfarlane & Zoe Stevenson
Women's lightweight double sculls
Julia Edward & Sophie MacKenzie
Men's pair
Hamish Bond & Eric Murray
Men's lightweight single sculls
Adam Ling
Women's lightweight single sculls
Zoe McBride
New Zealand continued their pre-eminence in world rowing. There were the expected world titles for the likes of the men's pair (Bond and Murray), the women's double sculls (Macfarlane and Stevenson) and women's lightweight double sculls (Edward and MacKenzie) and a couple of terrific results with the men's and women's lightweight single sculls (Ling and McBride) but, encouragingly, there was the emergence of some other crews 12 months out from Rio. The men's and women's eights showed they are tracking well, with the men finishing fourth and the women second. New Zealand claimed nine medals (five gold, three silver and one bronze) at the world championships in France (and that was without former world single sculls champion Emma Twigg, who was taking a sabbatical), and hope to qualify in all 14 classes for Rio (they have qualified nine boats already).
Rugby
World Cup
New Zealand men
This is the triumph that most resonated with the nation. New Zealand won their third World Cup, becoming the first to go back-to-back and the first All Blacks side to win it away from home. They were a little underwhelming in pool play but were terrific in their 62-13 quarter-final demolition of France, strong in their 20-18 win over South Africa and then composed in their 34-17 triumph over Australia in the final. It ended an era, with the retirements - in some cases international retirements - of Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Keven Mealamu and Tony Woodcock but the future still looks bright. A three-peat, anyone?
Woodchopping
World championships
Jason Wynyard
No one wields an axe quite like Jason Wynyard, and the wood pile will always be well stocked just through his training. The 42-year-old, who followed his dad into the sport and turned professional in 1996, won his seventh individual title at the Stihl timbersports world championships in Poland last month as the best all-round lumberjack. He's previously won Jack and Jill competitions with his wife Karmyn - something he labels as the proudest moment in his sporting career - and has a bunch of world records. "I've never found a piece of wood that beat me," he told the Herald last year.
Yachting
49er
Peter Burling & Blair Tuke
Moth
Peter Burling
Burling and Tuke are the Bond and Murray of New Zealand sailing. The pair are unbeaten in the 49er skiff class since their silver at the 2012 London Olympics - a run of 24 regattas - and are hot favourites to claim gold in Rio next year. Burling seems to have an innate ability to put a boat in the right place and Tuke is incredibly accomplished in helping him get it there and they won the world championships by a comfortable 34 points. It is the reason Team New Zealand have brought in the pair for their next America's Cup campaign - Team NZ are leading the America's Cup world series despite little time together - and Burling had earlier this year won the Moth world championships in Sorrento, Italy. It was little wonder, then, that Burling and Tuke were named ISAF World Sailor(s) of the Year for 2015.
Other world champions worthy of celebrating include ...
Nigel Richards won the French Scrabble world championship... even though he didn't speak any French at all. Incroyable.
Kiwi dance crew The Bradas won the adult crew division of the hip hop world championships in California. The Royal Family, minus Charles and Camilla, were second in the mega crew section.
Is anyone missing? They must be elite athletes, ruling out age-group champions. Email sports@hos.co.nz
Mike Thorpe argues the numbers suggest that they are.