Dame Lisa Carrington celebrates her eighth Olympic gold medal. Photo / Photosport
By Michael Burgess in Paris
In years from now, this is the Olympic memory that Kiwi parents will tell their children about.
This is the ‘I was there’ moment – where two New Zealanders shared top billing in an event at the Games.
It has happened rarely down the years and this one almost lived up to all the hype.
Dame Lisa Carrington was already a sporting immortal – so where is she now?
At the end of a packed programme in Paris, the 35-year-old has beaten a world-class field to claim her third gold of this Games and the eighth of her career.
Great rival Aimee Fisher never featured at the front of the race, unable to recover from a slow start and crossing fourth as the podium remained the same from Tokyo.
Carrington instead had to overhaul Hungarian Tamara Csipes, who led at the halfway mark by 0.18s. The Kiwi steadily reeled in the leader and eventually stopped the clock in an Olympic-best time of 1m 47.36s, 1.08s ahead of Csipes.
It completes Carrington’s second successive hat-trick of golds, a feat that would have previously been thought as impossible and surely something we will never see again.
Fisher has pushed Carrington to the limit over the last few years. For a long time Carrington seemed untouchable in the solo events but the Rotorua paddler changed that, beating her on several occasions, both in New Zealand and overseas.
That has forced Carrington, at the end of her career, to find something else, to drag out yet more improvement when she was already seen as the greatest of all time.
“It’s really interesting... you probably don’t realise how much you feel that your identity is wrapped in winning. And until you don’t win, you don’t realise what you’re leaning on,” Carrington told NZME following the race.
“I think it really made me realise that I had to fight to perform this whole week. I had to be super diligent and I guess it just taught me that I have to pay attention to the detail, and turning up, and literally just being able to handle the pressure is a tough thing.”
Fisher deserves tremendous credit and when the dust settles, she should savour her Olympic journey. She has made amazing progress over the last three years and may be seen as the paddler to beat in Los Angeles, as she becomes the lynchpin of the New Zealand team.
Though Carrington did hint that the golden glow she’s currently feeling could spur her on to yet another campaign.
“It’s pretty enticing to continue after this one, so we’ll just have to see. I think I’ll just get home and just see my dog and get grounded.”
Saturday was a day to be celebrated. It was a spine-tingling moment, watching the two black boats line up in adjacent lanes at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.
The contest had been eagerly anticipated since Fisher qualified for the Olympics via the Oceania Championships back in February. The expectation went up another level after the two World Cup meets this year, with both of them going under the world’s best time in Szeged.
Csipes loomed as a danger, given she had lowered that mark again in a Hungarian domestic meet, but she couldn’t hold off the unstoppable Carrington in this one.
Conditions were ideal, with barely a ripple on the water and hardly a breath of wind. The stands were packed – with the biggest crowd of the week. There was a large contingent of Kiwi fans draped in black, including many family and friends.
The majority appeared to be aligned with Carrington but there was still a decent section of Fisher support, before New Zealand’s greatest Olympian started the celebrations by clinching her eighth gold medal, level with Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt.