Kiwi canoe teams with long-term plan

Lisa Carrington. Photo / Stephen Parker.

July 24, 2020 seems light years away.

But, of course, it's less than six years until the Tokyo Olympics begin and it's an event that Canoe Racing New Zealand have big plans for.

Many Kiwi sports fans will remember the gold-medal exploits of Lisa Carrington in the K-1 200m at the London Olympics two years ago but the national body's designs for Tokyo involve further trips to the podium.

The first steps in those endeavours were taken yesterday when the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships got underway in Moscow.

Aside from Carrington, who will contest the K-1 200m and 500m events, there will be a men's crew in the K-4 1000m and a women's boat in the K-4 500m.

Scott Bicknell, who usually competes in a two-man boat, will enter the K-1 200m and Para-canoer Scott Martlew also lined up in the LTA K-1 200m and has progressed to tomorrow's final.

The men's and women's K4 crews are where CRNZ believe they can make an impact, although the progress will be slow and this year's world championships will give them a gauge of where they're at as they eye Tokyo.

The men finished fourth in the B final at last year's world championships in Germany and the women are making their first appearance at an event of this magnitude.

Next year's world championships will dictate Olympic qualification for Rio in 2016 and CRNZ chief executive Mark Weatherall said the women's crew of Teneale Hatton, Aimee Fisher, Jaime Lovett and Caitlin Ryan could be ahead of the Tokyo schedule.

"We are pretty excited about where they're up to and what they could do and this is another step in that lead up to Rio," Weatherall said of this week's event. "Our objective is to get them in that A final."

The women's crew were set to race their heat at 5.25pm today.

Hatton, who Weatherall respectfully described as "a machine", will also enter the K-1 1000m and 5000m races during the weekend as part of a gruelling world championships programme.

Neither of the longer distances are Olympic events but Hatton is the defending champion in the 5000m race after claiming gold in Germany last year.

Meanwhile, the men's K-4 boat, made up of brothers Darryl Fitzgerald and Jarrod Fitzgerald, Martyn McDowell and Zac Quickenden had trained alongside the well-regarded Hungarian and Serbian crews recently and were set to race their first heat tomorrow night.

"The long-term plan is 2020; that's where they're heading," Weatherall said.

Carrington has a busy day in store tomorrow with her heat in the K-1 500m set to start at 5.20pm (NZT) with the semifinals to follow; her heat in the 200m was scheduled to take place later in the day.