Cambridge – The Oceania and NZ canoe sprint championships promises to serve up a feast of top-class action on Lake Karapiro across a jam-packed four-day programme Friday.
A total of 355 paddlers will descend on Cambridge in the battle for national honours with competitors from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Singapore and the Pacific Islands in the hunt for titles.
One of the most eagerly anticipated races on the programme will be the women’s K1 500m featuring five-time Olympic and 12-time world champion Dame Lisa Carrington (Eastern Bay).
The 33-year-old kayaking icon is one the stars of New Zealand sport, but the multiple times Halberg Award winner knows she will face a powerful challenge from 2021 World K1 500m champion Aimee Fisher (Hawke’s Bay).
In a repeat of their epic 2022 showdown, when the two domestic stars of canoe sprint racing raced off in pursuit of the one boat per nation spot as allowed by the International Canoe Federation at the world championships, the top-class duo will once again be locked in a best-of-three selection trial.
Chasing the women’s K1 500m spot at the 2023 world canoe sprint championships in Duisburg, Germany, the first race of the series will take place in heat one of the women’s K1 500m on Friday with the second race of the selection trial, the national K1 500m final, on Saturday.
Expect the 2023 selection to serve up a titanic battle akin to last year’s head-to-head showdown. On that occasion Fisher edged Carrington by just eight hundredths of a second in the first race to capture the K1 500m 2022 NZCT New Zealand canoe sprint title.
Carrington bounced back from her narrow defeat in the national final to prevail in the second and third races of the series to earn 2022 world championship selection, where she went on to claim the world K1 500m crown as well as K1 200m title in Canada.
Other leading women’s paddlers to keep an eye throughout the regatta include 2022 world championship representatives North Shore duo Alicia Hoskin and Tara Vaughan and Olivia Brett (Arawa).
Another interesting entrant is Danielle McKenzie, an ocean paddling specialist and elite ironwoman, who is trying her hand at kayak sprint.
Set to make her NZ sprint nationals debut, McKenzie has been a dominant force in ocean ski racing since she claimed the 2019 world championship, backing it up with a silver in 2022. The Gold-Coast based 29-year-old is the one of the most decorated NZ surf athletes and recently placed third overall in the recent ironwoman series.
