Jae Frew
Since her Olympic debut in 2012, Dame Lisa Carrington has been an awe-inspiring presence in New Zealand sport.
The powerhouse canoeist has won a staggering 10 World Champion golds, five Olympic golds and one bronze, making her the most successful Kiwi Olympian ever – but Dame Lisa is the first to stand up and cheer when other women also reach dizzying heights.
“I think there’s still this sense of seeing a woman do an amazing job, and then turning on ourselves and wondering, ‘How does that reflect on me?’ Does that mean I’m worse?” muses Dame Lisa, 33.
“My hope for New Zealand women is that we keep supporting each other. It’s not about comparing ourselves negatively. It’s about empowering each other and raising ourselves up together.”
The two-times Halberg Supreme Award winner says there are many ways to define success.
“With sport, I do it because I want to be the best,” she asserts. “I want to win. I’m really competitive.”
But after so many years as a top athlete, she’s come to realise that even when reaching for her highest goals, it’s important “to be authentic and have integrity”.
Dame Lisa explains, “You don’t want to look back and think, ‘Oh, I wish I had treated that person nicer.’ You want to do it in a way that doesn’t affect people negatively, but instead lifts them. So I would see that as success too.”
This year has been a big one for Lisa, who was born in Tauranga and raised in the Bay of Plenty beachside town of Ōhope. In the 2022 New Year Honours, she was made Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and in March she wed her longtime partner Michael Buck.
When it comes to naming just one Kiwi woman who has inspired her, she says it’s an impossible ask.
“You get people who are close, like my mum or my nana – and then you look at the amazing things that women like Dame Trelise Cooper and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa have done. There’s not just one person for me.”
As for her greatest triumph, she says it was last year’s Tokyo Olympics where she won three gold medals in six days.
“Because of the pandemic, it ended up being a five-year campaign,” she tells. “To prepare so long for that one week of racing and then being able to execute what I wanted to do… that’s my biggest accomplishment.”
