Heart of gold
It was a grey and chilly Tuesday morning at the start of October when Lisa Carrington decided today was the day. It had been almost two months since she last picked up a paddle; almost two months since she became New Zealand’s most successful Olympian ever. Yet after a long lockdown stuck at home on Auckland’s North Shore – not to mention two weeks on her own in an MIQ hotel in Christchurch – the change to Level 3 restrictions meant she was finally able to get back to her happy place. Being back out on Lake Pupuke, the North Shore waters on which she’s trained for over a decade, felt amazing, and even though she’d already decided she wasn’t yet done with the sporting career that’s cemented her place as an Olympic great, it was in this moment she knew she still had plenty left to give. “It just felt so right to be back in the kayak,” she says, as she settles in to chat over the phone from the Auckland home she shares with her fiancé Michael Buck, who she fondly calls Bucky, and their 18-month-old Cavoodle, Colin. “It was nice being out there with no expectations. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t aiming for anything, it was just about enjoying the feel of the water. It was relaxing, like going for a walk.”
Relaxing isn’t something that comes entirely naturally to this high-achiever, but in the past few months she’s had no choice but to embrace the downtime. In an ideal world, the 32-year-old – who won an incredible
