Dame Lisa Carrington has added another chapter to her Olympic legacy, teaming with Alicia Hoskin to claim the seventh gold medal of her career at K2 500 in Paris.
Dame Lisa, 35, won this event at Tokyo 2020 with Caitlin Regal and New Zealand has become the first nation to defend the crown, dominating their rivals to win by more than a boat length in 1m 37.28s — two seconds clear of their pursuers.
Carrington and Hoskin had earlier propelled the Kiwi K4 crew to gold, and the former now has a chance to defend her K1 title on Saturday night (NZ time).
"[Defending the gold] is not something I thought about until the other day, but it's amazing," Carrington told Sky Sport. "I can't believe we've managed to win today.
"With Caitlin in Tokyo, that was an amazing result and to do it again here, we didn't expect to do it, but we trained as hard as we could so we were in a position to win."
Another gold also strengthens Hoskin's claims on Olympic history, after her role in the fourseat boat. The margin of this result must leave the world's best wondering how they can close down the flying Kiwis.
"I was just so locked in on Lisa, we were paddling our own race out there and didn't realise where the others were," said Hoskin.
"We knew it was an extremely high-qualify field and we have a lot of respect for the girls racing today. We took it very seriously, stuck to our race plan, trusted each other and had a really good time.
"I'm just loving the paddling, I love being out there with these girls. I love putting a race together that we can be proud of, and just showing our preparation our coaches and support team have done with us."
New Zealand's dominance of the women's kayak programme may well continue in the solo event, where Carrington and teammate Aimee Fisher have qualified fastest through heats into the semifinals.
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