Beyond the gold rush

As the dust settles on her Paris triumph, Ōhope’s Dame Lisa Carrington contemplates her next chapter. The kayaking legend shares her post-Olympic reflections and the unexpected joys of an unscheduled life.

WORDS Karl Puschmann | ART DIRECTOR Annabelle Rose | PHOTOGRAPHY Garth Badger
PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT Melissa Brinsden | STYLIST Nicky Adams
HAIR+MAKE-UP Desiree Osterman

Half an hour into UNO’s chat with Dame Lisa Carrington she makes a dramatic and quite unexpected admission. 

We’d been talking about her phenomenal success in kayaking. Not just at the recent Paris Olympics where she claimed an awe-inspiring hat trick of gold medals in the K4 500m, K2 500m and K1 500m kayaking events – astoundingly being the second time she’s accomplished the miraculous feat of claiming three golds – but also how she got started in the sport she now thoroughly dominates. 

After three consecutive Olympic Games, a total of eight gold medals, numerous records and the national honour of a Damehood for ‘Outstanding Services to Canoe Racing,’ it’s easy to imagine she was born with a paddle in her hand and had a kayak as a cot. 

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Kayaking was really just a supplement to surf lifesaving,” she admits with a grin. “But I was fairly good, so I kept at it.”

Lisa didn’t come to kayaking until her teenage years. It’s crazy to think that had the elite athlete, now 35, been fractionally better at her beloved sport of surf lifesaving, her life, Aotearoa’s sporting history and the Olympic record books would all look vastly different.

Maybe she would have smashed it in surf lifesaving the same way she dominates kayaking.

She laughs at the idea. “I wasn’t going to make it to the national teams or anything like that,” she says.

Aside from the bleary-eyed die-hards, Aotearoa awoke on August 11th to the huge news from Paris that Lisa had achieved the impossible; a second successive hat trick of Olympic gold medals following a masterclass performance in the final of the K1 500m.

As the defending champion, she went into the race the favourite, but gold was not a sure thing. Her great rival, fellow Kiwi Aimee Fisher, was marked as a potential upsetter. 

So it made for alarming viewing for Kiwis who’d stayed up late to cheer New Zealand on when Hungary’s Tamara Csipes shot off like a rocket at the starting gun. At the halfway mark Lisa was trailing by half-a-boat length, which is massive, and Fisher was stuck fighting for position in the middle of the pack.

If Lisa was as worried as the Kiwi supporters watching on, it didn’t show. The camera frequently zoomed in on Lisa and she looked cool, calm and collected. It did not look at all like she was straining to kickstart any dormant energy reserves. Nor did she look rushed. It didn’t even look like she’d cracked a sweat. 

Instead, her movements were fluid and hypnotic, as she smoothly glided up to catch Csipes, pass Csipes and then leave Csipes in her dust. Lisa crossed the finish line with no one else in sight and her famous beaming smile radiating pure joy. “Carrington, simply unbeatable!” raved the television commentator. “The GOAT [Greatest Of All Time] just keeps getting greater,” Radio New Zealand gushed. “A sporting immortal,” enthused the New Zealand Herald. “Yessss!” cheered Poppy, my nine-year-old daughter, when we watched the early-morning highlights.

It was Lisa’s final event of the Paris Olympics. She’d already led the K2 and K4 teams to gold but hadn’t been able to join in the post-race celebrations because her focus needed to remain on her upcoming solo K1 race. 

“I could finally take it in, be proud and not be preparing for the next thing because there was no more to prepare for,” she says of the moment she crossed the finish line. “It was cool to be able to embrace my teammates and my coach and my family and let it all sink in. I felt amazement and pride that we as a team had won all three events that we’d challenged ourselves to achieve.”

That was the glorious end. But how did she feel, on the water, at the starting line?

“Part of competing at the Olympics is managing pressure and expectation,” she says.

The way she does this is to question herself. As she explains, gold medals and glory are not what’s powering her outstanding career.

“It’s really understanding the balance of what I’m doing it for. Is it just to win? Just to cross the line first?” she says in a way that makes clear the answer to those two questions is a simple ‘no’. 

“Or is it because of all these other things that are important to me? I want to be able to cross the line and whether I’m first or last, be really proud of the performance.”

It turns out that the stress of defending your title against the world’s best, at the world’s premium competition, with the whole world watching, is only half of it.

“Pressure also comes from the expectation of thinking you need to win. Thinking that if you don’t win, you’re nothing. What will people think if you don’t perform? I can’t attach my identity to thinking that I’m a winner and if I don’t win then I’m not myself anymore.”

“There’s a lot of awareness and self-awareness around what those medals mean,” she says quietly, before adding. “It’s also about keeping your ego in check.” 

Which is another surprising admission. Chatting with Lisa is like talking to an old mate. She’s incredibly friendly, quick to smile and down to earth. And when it comes to discussing her astounding accomplishments she’s almost ego-less, talking of them in a matter-of-fact fashion rather than the awesome achievements they are.

Still, it must be hard to not believe the hype, especially when you’re routinely called the ‘Queen of Kayak’ and have people falling over themselves to congratulate you − this writer no exception having greeted her with a proudly patriotic congratulation.

“It definitely is,” Lisa admits. “It’s about humility. Just because I’ve achieved something doesn’t mean I’m better than anyone else.”

Then, an example springs to mind.

“If I’m lining up in a queue, and I’m hundredth in line, just because I have medals doesn’t mean I get to jump the queue,” she laughs. “Your medal doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you a better person than anyone else. You don’t have to be a great person to win an Olympic gold medal. You could be a terrible person and win a medal.”

Lisa’s house may now be north of the Bombay Hills, having relocated to Auckland years ago for training, but her home remains in Ōhope, the picturesque beach town that’s just a smidge east of Whakatāne. She, her husband Michael ‘Bucky’ Buck and Colin, their pet cavoodle, regularly pop down to see family and friends. They headed there after her triumphant return from Paris.

“It’s a beautiful place to be,” she smiles. “I reckon this summer I’ll be able to spend a bit more time there.”

It was Ōhope’s endless beach that Lisa credits for birthing her love of the ocean, as she recalls a childhood full of adventure playing with friends on the golden sands and playing in its rolling waves.

“We lived right on the water, right on the beach there. That’s where my affinity for the water came from,” she says. “We would spend quite a bit of time in the water, especially when it was stormy and rainy. We’d go out and have a heap of fun surfing on boogie boards or kayaks.”

Wanting her and her elder brothers, Shaun and Brett, to respect the ocean, her parents enrolled them into the Whakatāne Surf Club’s Nippers programme, where Lisa quickly became enamoured with the sport
of surf lifesaving.

Even at a young age, her focus and determination manifested, and she threw herself into her training, even switching to the Mount Maunganui Surf Club when she was 16 for advanced coaching. Surf lifesaving was everything and she started competing. She was walking the path but it was proving a bumpy road. Then fate intervened.

“My dad heard about a camp that was being held for kayaking. He took me along, just as a supplement to surf lifesaving,” she says of her less than auspicious introduction to the sport. 

“From there I raced at a few national champs…” she suddenly cuts herself short. Perhaps worried it sounds like she’s bragging, she almost apologetically says, “There wasn’t too many of us that competed. You
could make a New Zealand team pretty − I mean, you had to be a certain level but there really weren’t many of us competing.” 

Satisfied she’s played it down enough, she continues. “And then kayaking just became something I did.”

Another thing she recently did is release her first book. Lisa Carrington Chases a Champion is a beautifully illustrated children’s picture book for kids aged four to nine. The book is fictional but based on her lived experience, and follows eight-year-old Lisa conquering her fears and anxieties around her first big kayak race. Lisa hopes it becomes a book series. She started it three years ago, after being approached by independent publishers Huia. They asked if she’d like to write a book.

“I thought a children’s book would be cool,” she smiles. “I wanted to share the lessons that I’d learned and the lessons I’m still learning. You can be influenced in such great ways at a young age, so having lessons that I’ve learned be woven into what kids are reading at night, or what their parents, grandparents or aunties and uncles are reading them is so cool,” she enthuses. “I’m so proud of the story.”

She’s also proud that Huia are publishing the book in both English and Te Reo, saying “I’m so grateful that we were able to translate it into Māori, it’s really important.”.

She walks with her Māori heritage, especially when overseas competing in high-pressure events like the Olympics.

“It’s something that I draw strength from, particularly when I’m away. Those are the moments I’m leaning on my heritage and whakapapa to give me strength,” she says. “It’s part of me. But I also use it in a way to keep me humble. To remind myself of who was before me.”

As for what the future holds, Lisa’s in no particular rush to find out. Media have been pushing to discover whether the Queen of Kayaks, the GOAT, will paddle out to defend her titles at the 2028 Olympics in
Los Angeles. It’s a tantalising thought; having accomplished the impossible of two gold-medal hat tricks, could she go on to achieve the downright unthinkable and win a hat trick of gold-medal hat tricks? The extreme challenge and monumental difficulty of such a feat is inconceivable. Outrageous. Preposterous. But, then again…

For now, however, Lisa’s “taking a breath”.

“I’m still not 100 percent certain on what I’ll do with sport,” she admits after the year she describes as “massive”. 

“People tell me I need to go on holiday,” she laughs. 

That, however, would be doing something. Instead, she’s enjoying the possibilities offered by all the hours in an open day free of alarm clocks, training and schedules.

“In sport, there’s always a sense that time’s running out because you’ve got to make the most of every moment,” she explains. “Right now, I’m spending all my time being relaxed and saying ‘Yes’ to things that I normally wouldn’t.”

“You know, staying out late and pushing the boat out…” she grins.

After her unprecedented history-making performance in Paris, no one can begrudge Dame Lisa Carrington a few celebratory late-night drinks followed by some late-morning sleep-ins. Los Angeles 2028 can wait. 

Before leaving her to some well-deserved relaxation, I sneak in one final question that may provide a hint about her future plans; Has she been out on the water since she’s been back?

“I’ve been out for a few swims,” she beams, gliding past my trap question with all the effortless grace she displayed in the water at Paris. 

“But no paddling.” 

Lisa Carrington Chases a Champion is in all good bookstores now.