Lisa Carrington Wins Double Gold at World Cup 1, Milan

5 May 2014

Lisa Carrington Wins Double Gold at World Cup 1, Milan

It was all smiles for Lisa Carrington as she followed up her K1 500m gold medal with another in the 200m at World Cup 1 in Milan overnight.

The Olympic and world champion paddled a tight first 100m with nothing separating the top five paddlers. She put on what is becoming her trademark burst of speed in the latter half of the race, pulling ahead to win by half a boat length ahead of Poland’s Marta Walczkiewics and Karolina Naja, in a time of 40.42 seconds.

She had earlier qualified fastest for the K1 200m final by winning her heat in 40.506 seconds to advance to the semifinals. She then won her semifinal in 40.775s, ahead of Karolina Naja and Slovakia's Martina Kohlova.

On Saturday night (NZ time), Carrington led from the outset to win gold in the K1 500m final, never relinquishing her hold on the lead.

Her winning time in ideal conditions was one minute 51.849 seconds, almost a second quicker than silver medallist Franziska Weber of Germany, with Austria's Yvonne Schuring claiming bronze a tenth of a second behind Weber.

The brand new women's K4 500m combo finished an impressive fifth in their final, with Teneale Hatton, Jamie Lovett, Aimee Fisher and Caitlin Ryan only 1.972 seconds behind the Chinese winners. They were well pleased to do so well in their first international outing and hope to use the experience to improve on this result.

Teneale Hatton was hoping to follow up on last years’ gold in the K1 5000m, the longer distances being her speciality. Last year she collected multiple titles, winning world championship gold in the K1 5000m and again in the under-23 K1 at the World Marathon Champs in Copenhagen and Ocean Surf Ski Champs in Portugal. However she was “a little disappointed” to settle for silver in this World Cup after leading the race the whole way. “It just means I’ll have to work a bit harder in the second World Cup” she says and we remind her that silver is no mean achievement in itself!

The team now heads to Racice, Czech Republic, to do it all again at the second world Cup in two weeks’ time.

Video footage: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMtQr2MEpsQ
World Cup website: www.milanworldcanoesprint.com
NZ Facebook page: www.facebook.com/canoeracing

ENDS

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