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Sport Nation
'It was strange': Dame Lisa Carrington's SOS experience at World Champs
Sport Nation • September 2nd, 2025 10:42 am
Dame Lisa Carrington | Photo: Photosport
Dame Lisa Carrington has taken a philosophical outlook on New Zealand's underwhelming performance at the World Canoe Sprint Championships in Milan last week.
Called into the squad at the 11th hour as an injury replacement for Olivia Brett, Dame Lisa abandoned her Tahitian getaway to fill the seat in the women's K2 alongside Tara Vaughan.
The duo qualified for the final but came in fourth, meaning Dame Lisa missed out on a world champs medal for the first time since 2011.
The eight-time Olympic gold medallist admits the atypical build-up made for a very unique challenge.
"It was really different," Carrington told Sport Nation.
"Integrating into the team wasn't, I've been around the team for such a long time that it wasn't too hard, but definitely a different approach.
Dame Lisa Carrington on the importance of the AIMS Games | Sport Nation
"I've had many years of experience and I'd been training fairly hard up until that point, so I wasn't too far off some really good preparation, but it was strange."
The New Zealand team left Italy with just a solitary bronze medal won by Aimee Fisher’s K1 1000 bronze, making for a somewhat disappointing start to the new Olympic cycle ahead of Los Angeles 2028.
For someone so accustomed to the podium, Dame Lisa insisted the competition was still a valuable learning experience for the group - an opportunity to set the bar early.
"I think you just have to kind of look at it and objectively go, 'what was the preparation like? Could we have done better'?
"But you always take this year after an Olympics building towards the next one as an opportunity.
"I think instead of 'where did we come, what results did we get', it's like okay now that's a good line in the sand, 'what could we have done better', and then moving forward from there."
But for now, competition is low on Carrington's list of priorities, as she looks to pick up where she left off in the tropics, having so abruptly bailed on her husband just a few weeks ago.
"I'm definitely going away for a holiday," she joked.
"That's probably something my husband's been looking forward to... he definitely deserves it."
Listen to the full interview below:
