Kayaking: Third gold for Carrington

Lisa Carrington has won a third gold medal at the kayaking world champs in Germany overnight. Photo / Ben Fraser

Lisa Carrington has embraced the lift in competition by winning her third world cup kayaking gold medal in two weeks in Germany overnight.

The 25-year-old showed her winning habit is going to be hard to shake, fighting off Poland's Ewelina Wojnarowska to claim the K1 500m in 1min 50.199secs at the Duisburg venue. Carrington led by 0.35 at the halfway stage of the final but had to overcome a determined finish by her Polish rival to win, with Volha Khudzenka (Belarus) third.

"I'm really happy with the race itself because I could really work hard - the calibre this weekend was pretty high and the racing was strong so I really had to push it," Carrington said. "It's always nice to get the most out of myself."

Carrington didn't race the K1 200m this weekend - the event in which she's the defending world and Olympic champion - though she will attempt both distances again in Denmark next week at the final world cup.

Once again, she wasn't the only Kiwi female to shine, with Kayla Imrie and Aimee Fisher collecting bronze in the K2 200m in their first race together.

Imrie and Fisher finished the sprint in 38.819, easily within strike of winners Lani Belcher and Angela Hannah (Great Britain) and runner-ups Sabine Volz and Conny Wassmuth (Germany) who clocked 38.218 and 38.375 respectively.

The Kiwi pair are part of a new K4 combination, with the other two crew members - Caitlin Ryan and Jaimee Lovett - winning the B final of the K2 500m.

All four combined in the afternoon session to finish second in their K4 500m heat and progress directly into tonight's final, with Imrie explaining they had used their respective K2 races to hone their technique in the larger boat.

"We have really been aiming to fire up our starts by committing weight and power strokes in the first 25m of the race," Imrie said. "Both the K2 crews managed to do this today and we were able to execute the same thing in the K4 500m heat, which set us up for a great race."

After winning gold in Portugal last week, only the Belarus crew were able to match the Kiwis in their heat, finishing in 1:39.062 with New Zealand just 1.181secs behind.

Germany and Poland fought out the second heat, with Lovett also relishing the sharp increase in the quality of the field from last week, heading into tonight's final.

"The pressure around the racing is definitely higher because the racing is a lot tighter," Lovett said. "Most of the crews from the final of last year's world championships will be racing the final so it will give us a really good opportunity to see how we go up against them and how we hold out under tight racing and a bit more pressure."

Marty McDowell was the other Kiwi in action overnight, finishing ninth in the B final of the K1 1000m in a time of 3:42.209