December 4, 2024 • 48 mins
On the final episode for 2024, Murray is joined by double gold medalist at the Paris Olympics, Alicia Hoskin. Deaks and Alicia talk about overcoming her rare heart complications, racing with the GOAT Lisa Carrington and the complexities of racing the K4.
Murray Deaker has been interviewing the biggest names in sport for 40 years. 'Murray Deaker’s Sporting Lives' will interview legends of sport, uncovering their stories. Full of memories, theories, and opinion. And no nonsense! 'Murray Deaker’s Sporting Lives' podcast brought to you by Gold Sport.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway, the
leading manufacturer of premium golf clubs, balls and accessories worldwide.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, I'm Murray Deek here. Welcome to my podcast, Murray
Deeker's Sporting Lives. During my career, I've spent forty years
interviewing the biggest names in sport and I'm thrilled to
bring you this podcast talking to sporting legends and giving
you a look into their world, to hear their memories,
their stories and some opinion too. Today we're going back
(00:34):
to one of the big Olympic success stories. My guest
today the double Olympic champion, winning gold in both the
K two and K four at the Paris Olympics. Alisha
Hoskin joins.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
US Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Alisha Hoskin is more than just the woman sitting behind
Lisa Carrington and the canoe well as if that isn't enough,
her story is inspirational on so many fronts. She epitomizes
the best in our key. We site her courage, her tenacity,
her stubbornness and her athleticism. They make her a very
(01:21):
special New Zealander. The more I've read about her and
talk to people about her, the more special I've come
to realize she is. Alisia. I'm privileged to have you
on this program.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Thank you for coming, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Look, can we start right back at the beginning. What
is it about Gisbone that produces top kayakers and canoeists?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Totally?
Speaker 4 (01:45):
I mean Gisbon is an extremely special place and holds
a very special place.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
In my heart.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
And I think it comes down to the landscape that's there.
I mean we're surrounded by waterways and Gisbon athletes have
excelled in waka ama surf, life saving swimming. I mean,
we just have a real love and connection for the
water down there, and I think it's one of the
busiest little rivers that I've ever been on. So we're
(02:10):
always trying to make way for each other. And yeah,
it's just so awesome to see the environment down there,
and I think that's what makes special peddlers come out
of there.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Then, so many different levels.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
How did you get started?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Then? So I have an older sister, Courtney, who's about
a year and a half older than me, and I
as a little sister, I just had big heart eyes
for her and I wanted to do things that she did.
So when she started peddling for the first time, I
could see how much she loved it, and I so
wanted to be like her. I so wanted to go
(02:41):
and meet her friends down at the kayak club. So
she really sparked my interest in kayaking. And so then
when I got the opportunity to go to the Ames
Games and compete in the multi sport, I obviously got
to learn how to kayak. So I was down at
the local club learning how to not fall out pretty much.
And that's where I really enjoyed the challenge of it,
(03:03):
and I thought, this is what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
We've all seen recently you at the Ames Game again,
this time handing out medals, and you know it's a
special event. This isn't it totally?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I mean the turnout of the amount of kids that
go to Aims Games and to see it just growing
year after year and to see them massive smiles on
their face.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
You know, it's more than just going down there to
win a meddle.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It's about representing your school, getting to go out and
compete with a whole group of friends, and even going
down there myself. You know, I'm not necessarily going down
to find the next Olympian or find the next Kayaker.
I just want to see those kids get outside, be
active and just do some things that they're absolutely passionate about.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So I'm just there to encourage them.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Really about agen thousand off of them, I think, oh, it's.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
A huge turnout, and man, what an awesome thing for
our country.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It is. It's brilliant. So Courtney has had an influence
on you. And of course she then gets selected for
the two thy fifteen World Junior Champs. Did that fire
your ambition up more?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
It?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Totally? Did?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I mean to see how hard she worked that I
really got an appreciation and understanding for what it took
to make a New Zealand team, and I knew that
something that I wanted to do. So when she got
sent her first piece of New Zealand kit, I remember
her opening it and I was so excited for her
because it obviously means so much to put on a
(04:33):
black singlet, to put on the silver fern, and I
could see how much she had worked for it and
how much joy she got from experiencing all of that,
so I knew that something that I wanted to do,
and you.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Became a member of the Poverty Bay Kayak Club. It
was there that you began to be coached by the
nineteen eighty four Olympian Liz Thompson told me about her.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, I mean, what an awesome opportunity to be coached
by ex Olympians. But I think something special that did
was she was able to bring so many young women
into our sports. So I was actually at the club
during a time of so many cool young females. There
was my sister's age group, and then lots of us
in my age group, and we had a really cool
little community going and we'd play soccer on the field
(05:18):
next to the river before we got on. But they
also really encouraged getting out in teamboats, so that was
my first time sitting in a K four and sitting
in a K two. So to have those skills right
from a young age was really really good for what
I ended up doing. But the club was also in
a position where they could bring over a coach from Hungary,
(05:38):
and Hungary has a huge legacy in our sport, so
they had the resources to be able to bring him
over and so then when I moved to him coaching me,
it developed my love more for the structured training. And
I was in my final years of school and he
really believed that I could take it to high performance level.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
So I was really cooled have.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Both Liz in my early years developing just that love
for the team and the peddling, and then to have
the opportunity to be coached by our Hungarian coach that
developed my love for the more high performance style of peddling.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
There's a earn in time in your life because you're
also head prefect of Gisboo and Girls High School. Now,
unlike many other form of teachers, I have real question
marks about head prefix. In prefix, I think they get
too much put on their plate and too many demands
put on them. What was it like for you?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Ah?
Speaker 4 (06:35):
So that's very true, but it's also really taught me
the responsibility and how I needed to plan my week
and plan my day, and those are skills that I've
taken into my life beyond school. So I am really
grateful to have had that responsibility.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
But it was in a year where I was.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Selected for my first junior team, so I was training
for that, but it was also the year that I
had my heart complications, and it was awesome the year
that I was trying to study to be able to
do my exams to a really high level. So there
was a lot on my plate and I did really
enjoy that responsibility, but it did teach.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Me a lot of character building.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In that year of twenty seventeen, you're selected for the
Junior Canoe Sprint World Champs and you go for a
routine pre departure health check and the cardiology test said
that you had a wolf Park and White syndrome, which
(07:37):
no one listening to this program will have a clue
what that is, what is it and how will you
treat it?
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Yeah, so wolf Park in some White syndrome is pretty
much when you have an extra electrical pathway in your
heart and it causes these almost like a short circuit,
So it causes these periods of rapid heart rate that
can be quite dangerous when you're out there training and
pushing your heart rate to a really high level. So yeah,
like you said, I had just done these routine health
(08:05):
checks prior to leaving for the twenty seventeen Junior Worlds,
which my first Junior World. So I was so excited
and I was training so hard for it, and then
so I did these checks and thought nothing of it.
I thought, you know, that's just going to give my
parents peace of mind to send me overseas in good
shape and they won't worry about me too much. So yeah,
(08:26):
I carried on training after the tests had been done.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And so a week or.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
So later, my coach had a call while I was
paddling on the water and I was doing this two
k time trial, which is one of the hardest things
we did back then, and after one of them, she said,
I've just had a call from your dad. He's asked
you to get off the water and go and call
them back. And I thought, you know, that's really odd,
getting us to get pulled out of training. So I
(08:52):
walk upstairs in the clubroom call my dad and he said,
we've got your results back from your ECG one of
the tests that i'd had, and you've got what's called
wolfparkins in white syndrome, and it's actually unsafe for you
to be training right now until we do some more
tests see what it's about. And so I think I
ended up hanging up on him and I just burst
(09:14):
into tears in the clubrooms because I didn't know at
that point if I was ever going to be able
to do sport again, and I knew how much joy
it brought me and my life and my family. We're
all extremely active. So I had this moment of one,
what if I'm never allowed to be back in a
boat again, But what if that means no sport in general?
(09:36):
And who am I without sport? I mean, that was
it wasn't part of my identity, but I knew it's
something that I absolutely love to do, and it was
kind of a terrifying thought to not have sport in
my life. So yeah, we underwent more and more tests
and ended up having to get an ablation. So the
ablation is where they go in and fry that little
(09:58):
extra electrical path way pretty much. So yeah, I had
to undergo that oblation.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
How did they go in? It wasn't open heart surgery,
was it.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
No, it wasn't an open heart surgery, and I really
should know the vein that they use, but it's an
extremely technical thing. So they go through so it's just
like a keyhole surgery, so there's very minimal scarring. It's
not open or anything, and they managed to thread this
little needle that does the frying through the wall of
my heart and able to go in and find where
(10:32):
they need to.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Do the work.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Were you scared?
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Oh yeah, but I kind of. I kind of remember
treating it a bit like a game day. I was
so focused. I was like, Yep, I got this. I've
gotta be brave. I can take this on. But I
do remember saying goodbye to my parents as they rolled
me through the hospital, and little tear dripped down my
face because I knew that I was scared, but also
(10:55):
at that point I was like, Okay, this is gonna
set me up to be able to do what I
love again.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Have there been any repeats of that type of thing?
And how often are you checked?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:07):
So, after the ablation was done, they said it was successful,
but obviously they need to keep checking that to make
sure that it stays that way. So for mine, I
was lucky enough that the ablation did work and they
were able to attack the right area to make sure
that I wasn't going to get these periods of rapid
heart rate or danger when I went to a high
(11:31):
heart rate in my training or my competition, and so
A year following the surgery was my final check. So
in twenty eighteen, the end of twenty eighteen, I got
my final appointment done and everything was still looking good,
and they said I have just as much chance as
anyone else to have any other heart complications again. So
(11:52):
they said, no need to worry about it.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Do you have any special precautions that you still take?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Ah, not at this stage.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
So yeah, like I said, I've got just as much
risk as anyone else now. So obviously I do things
to keep a healthy heart, and I think one scare
is enough for a lifetime. You're going to do the
right things to look after your body. But yeah, like
everyone should.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I had open heart surgery in two thousand and five
and they went in and they had to do five
bypassers at the time and revasculating one side of the heart,
and I rang up the surgeon who happened to be
a friend of mine and said to him, you know,
how bad is it? And he said, your heart is
(12:38):
as good as anyone else's as long as you don't smoke.
And if you start smoking, murray, don't come back. And
I think that you've got it. You know, there are
certain things that.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You then have to do totally and if I.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Get a bit dizzy, I stop.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That's enough for me. Did one cardiol just at that
time tell you about a runner in America that gave
you some hope?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
So cardiologists are actually incredible people. And I was lucky
enough to have doctor Martin Styles. So he has got
all these accolades in his profession, and I trusted him
so much, and he had operated on a few other
athletes as well at the time, and so he knew
(13:26):
how much I wanted to get back out on the water.
And so he had told me this story of another
girl who was a runner, and she had had the
same thing as me and had a successful oblation and
she'd managed to reach the top level in her sport again.
And it just gave me that little glimpse of hope
that I needed through the recovery and to get back
(13:49):
out on the water again and have confidence in my
body again. But he's also the same cardiologist that did Robodell.
And so then when Robdell was the Chef de mission
and at the Tokyo Olympics, I went up to him
and said I had the same cardiologist as you, and
so that was quite exciting just to meet other people
along the journey. And I think that's why I've been
(14:10):
passionate about sharing that story because yeah, I know that
it helped me when I was in that hospital bed,
and hopefully that story can help others.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well. I found it, you know, inspiring, the fact that
by twenty nineteen you were prepared to come to Auckland
to train full time, leaving at home, leaving it you
know what obviously is a very loving, caring family us
A weeve it about your family before we talk about
the shift.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean, my family are incredible and we've grown up.
They've really developed my love for the outdoors and just
moving my body, and even just to have my sister
and I two daughters, and to be involved in sport
where it's not focused about the way your body looks
or different things. They really fit us a healthy narrative
(14:58):
around sport and that our bodies just help us do
what we love to do. So I'm really grateful for
my parents and the way they've guided me through sport
and high performance. But we did have a conversation before
I left home where I told them I was going
to go to Auckland and then train with the High
Performance women's team.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
This is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
And they did challenge me with a few questions, you know,
like are you sure like this is what you're going
to be signing up for? You sure you know what
you're in for? You know, they just challenged me on
is this the direction you want to take? And here
are the other options of you know, not a backup plan,
but in a way like what do you want to
study or what do you want after sport? Because your
(15:39):
body's not going to be able to compete forever. And
I'm really grateful for those conversations because it's not that
they didn't believe in me. I mean, they backed me
one hundred percent, but it was really healthy to have
those conversations so that I knew exactly why I was
going there, what I was trying to do, and that
I had taken into account, you know, what I wanted
to do with my studies, what I might want to
(16:02):
do after sport, as much as that changes for me
all the time. I'm really grateful for their support. And
then they've been pretty much at every Regetti since and
the only one they couldn't come to was obviously the
Tokyo Olympics. So yeah, it was really awesome to have
them in the stands in Paris and they just had
the best time. I mean they went through tissue boxes.
(16:24):
When my dad was getting so emotional, my mom had
to support him and be the strong woman.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
In the family.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
But yeah, so special to have them chairing their have
them watch the medal ceremonies, and yeah, just share that
experience with them.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
So you leave Gisbone, you're off to Auckland and then
in twenty twenty you're named the canoe sprint Athlete of
the Year and this is at the Canoe Racing New
Zealand's award was Lisa Sick. Now that's no I think
you've been there for that.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, I think it's so funny. I mean that's my
little claim to fame at the time. So Lisa was
completely healthy, but because of COVID, I mean, there was
only a few of us that have had competed that year.
So another athlete and I had headed over to Australia
to try and qualify an extra boat for the Tokyo Olympics.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And we had some really cool results.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Then came home and then the whole country went into lockdown,
so we were really the only ones that had competed
that year, and so when it came around to the
end of year awards, they got named the Athlete of
the Year. I was like, well, I may as well
claim it now, So yeah, that was me.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Great stuff and you know, so it's a lovely thing
to think about, isn't it to have won that then
you were one, you were one of Well we got
four peddlers in my throat today it doesn't matter of
enjoyed this A four peddlers selected for Tokyo. What did
(18:03):
you learn from that experience?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, I guess our sport has had some really cool
results in the past, but it is the second time
that a women's K four has competed in the Olympics,
So in the scheme of the legacy that the countries
like Hungary and Germany have in the sport, we were
quite fresh. So we went there and we learned a
lot about what it takes to race the K four
(18:28):
and what it takes to be a team. So the
K four is an extremely complex boat to race and
to succeed in why because you need four people on
the same page at the same time doing the same strategy,
and if you've been in a K one before, you
know it's an extremely tippy boat. And then you add
four people with the same amount of tippiness, and if
(18:48):
things aren't perfectly in sync, you can get a lean
in the boat, or you can get a wobble, and
that really throws off the speed of the boat. So
to get four girls paddling raally aligned with their technique,
strategy and to have a real sense of connection and
teamwork within that as well is a really unique thing
to line up with all of those components and for
(19:11):
them to all come into line on that one moment
every four years. So it is quite a complex boat
to win, and it's quite a complex event to win.
So yeah, we learned a ton about that in.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Tokyo and get through to the final Tokyo.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yes, and we came forth, so we were close to
the medals. But it really set a foundation for how
we wanted to work the K four and how we
wanted to lean into the teamwork, and how we wanted
to race it in the year's post Tokyo. So I'm
extremely grateful for that experience and it really has sort
(19:49):
of dictated the way that we learn and how we
peddle the boat.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Today, Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's Lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
One of the big breakthroughs in New Zealand sport was
under Arthur Lydiad and he went through a training regime
that you've probably heard about where the guys ran around
the why tackeries around. It was just kill us stuff,
but it was building up a huge body of resilience
(20:23):
and fitness. Do you do the same thing?
Speaker 4 (20:27):
So our training has evolved over the years and I've
come into the sport at a time where it has
been well established for a long time. So we do
need a huge amount of fitness. So we are doing
some massive pedals during the year and we're going round
and round Lake Poop Puckey for a good two hours
two and a half hours sometimes, so we do do
(20:49):
some really big sessions, but we've always got to keep
the component of speed in there as well. We've also
got to keep the component of the strength and the
power element, so it's not a purely fitness space, but
we need that to be able to do all the
following training blocks that lead us into a world champ
so that we can get faster, we can do multiple
(21:11):
races at that high quality and high intensity. So there
are so many components that go into kayaking as well
as the technique of it, so there's a few things
to balance there.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Roughly, how much of your training is physical outside of
the water.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
So we do some massive gym sessions throughout the year,
and it depends what phase of the year that we're in.
So during our gym blocks, we're in the gym four
times a week and those sessions can last up to
two hours in the gym and we're doing a range of.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Max strength, strength, endurance.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
We've got some really fun sessions that I enjoy of
like am raps, so that's as many rips as possible,
So you get given a time like a minute, and
you've got to see how many reps you can do
in that time. And I always love the challenge of
those sessions. So, yeah, it depends what phase of the
year we're in. But a good portion of our workers
off the water as well.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And what about mental training.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Yeah, I mean we do a lot of work off
like that isn't physical. And like I mentioned before, the
K four and even the K two and K one
at this point is really a team game. So we
do some really awesome work around teamwork. So we invest
a lot of time into that, and those can look
(22:31):
like good to our chunks of time where we're together.
We're having really authentic, vulnerable conversations. We're learning how to
create a vision together. We're learning what it takes to
race at this level, what it takes to take on
countries that have a huge legacy in the sport. We're
learning how to get the most out of ourselves but
(22:53):
also the most out of each other. And it's just
really fun game that we're pretty much playing, but it
does take a lot of planning, takes a lot of trust,
So we've invested a lot.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Of time into that.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Who leads that our coaches, so Gordon Walker and Chris
me Hack, so they're level to level of detail around
teamwork is something that is quite incredible, and so many
times people don't probably hear about that side of their
role because as coaches, you'd assume they're really focused on
(23:26):
the physiology and the technique and the training program, which
they are, and they do that to a really high level,
But there's this whole other element of creating a team
and bringing people together that I think is really special.
So they're leading a lot of those conversations and giving
us the skills to be able to take those conversations
on and to be able to learn about each other,
(23:49):
learn about ourselves. And the detail is incredible. I mean
they're always thinking of where should we do the meeting
that helps people feel safe and comfortable? Where how long
should it go for? Do we bring the quality and
the quantity of conversations? You know?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
How do we space them out? Do we do one
a week?
Speaker 4 (24:09):
So there's all these things going on behind the scenes
that mean we can turn up and have do really
awesome work together.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Four of you in the boat. What are the key
aspects then that help you blend as a team that
many of us who aren't kayakers don't appreciate.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
I mean, like I mentioned before, the boat is quite unstable,
so the synchronicity of our movements is really important. So
we've got to agree on a way to peddle so
that our angles are in line our leg drive that's
happening below the spray x so you probably won't see
our leg drives much, but that's got to be really
in sync. The time our blades hit the water. That's
(24:51):
got to all be in time. The time we exit
together is all going to be in time. So there's
a lot of work done around our technique, and I
guess that's why the teamwork is so important, because it
transfers from off the water onto the water, and so
much of that synchronicity comes from the work we do
off the water. So yeah, there's quite a few components
(25:11):
that go into it.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
When you look at this whole thing and what happened
with particularly the K four, it seems to me that
twenty twenty three was the breakthrough year. You go to
the World Championships and you win it, is that the breakthrough?
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I mean totally, But it's so important to acknowledge the
other breakthroughs we've had in our sport. So right back
to what they called the Golden Era of when we
had an awesome men's K four go and win gold
at the Olympics, so that was our first breakthrough. And
then to have Aaron Taylor she was our first female
kayaker at the Olympics, and then followed by Lisa Carrington
(25:52):
obviously is a massive breakthrough for our sport. Her achieving
that high level. And then there's the girls that were
in the k before before us, and so I think
like we've learned a lot and the sport has developed
so much to be in a position where we have
the right support people around us, we have the knowledge,
we have the skill, we know what it's going to take.
(26:14):
So all of those led us to the point in
twenty twenty three where we won the World Championships in
the women's k for and that's never been done before
by a non European country, So it really it was
another breakthrough for our sport, but it was dependent on
all those other steps that had led our team there.
But yeah, just learning what it takes to win that
(26:37):
event has been a massive journey.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
It fascinates me. And I'll tell you why. Sport that
I know a little bit about is rugby union, and
I've seen the focus go on the top of the pyramid,
the All Blacks, and I've seen rugby union people lose
interest in the heartland, which is the club and the
(27:03):
provincial thing. And now that the All Blacks are not
doing as well, the game's in real trouble. Your sport's
going to have to avoid that because here you have
this huge success at the top. How many canoeists are
there around New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Just a rough figure.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Oh, I don't know if i'd have the rough figure
for you. But the sport has been growing for as
long as I've been around. Our level of kids that
are involved have been growing as well, so national champs
have been getting bigger.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
We're trying to do.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
A lot of work with other water sports at the moment,
so linking in with the surf clubs around New Zealand
because obviously they have a huge influx of kids as well.
So we're trying to sort of work with other water
sports to be able to just create those opportunities for
kids to come into kayaking, to experience it, to learn
water safety. So there's a lot going on at the
(28:00):
grassroots level.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Well make sure it continues, or otherwise you'll fall down
the same hole that rugby Union has. I want to
get down to the nuts and bolts of the success
at this top level. It seems to me one name
comes through all the time and he's never available for
an interview. I don't think I haven't heard him interviewed,
(28:22):
but Gordon Walker is a standout. What makes him such
a brilliant coach?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
I guess it's sort of what I mentioned before, like,
his role is so multifaceted, and you'll often get glimpses
of the more the physical side. So he has a
background in physiology, and he puts together an amazing training
program for us, and he can answer all my questions
around the purpose of every session, what's going to what
(28:48):
adaptions am I going to have in my body? How
does this link towards the next training session, and how
does that link towards racing. So he's able to articulate
and understand our sport and our training. And then there's
the technique element. So here's the ability to know the
fundamentals of the way that we need a user paddle
(29:10):
to make the boat go fast. Add in the team
boat skills, so the ability to race our girls in
the K one, the K two, and the K four
as a whole other project. So you can start to
see the layers of why he is such an amazing coach.
But then you add on the off the water, so
his ability to challenge the team, to be able to
(29:33):
create a space where it's safe enough to have really
vulnerable conversations, to be able to build the culture within
the team. So I think all of those layered upon
each other create a very well rounded coach and I
think that's what's made him so good in the sport.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And despite his success, unquestionably the biggest name in sport
in kayaking and the ugus name in sport is Lisa Carrington.
Why she's so.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Good, I mean, some of the questions you might have
to ask her, but I can speak to what I've
experienced as her teammate and what I admire about her,
and that's pretty much that she isn't really in it
just for a gold medal. And don't get me wrong,
because she is extremely competitive, but she's rarely lent into
(30:27):
this incredible growth and this way that she can keep
improving year after year. Because if she was just doing
it for the gold medal, I'm assuming she would have
stopped way back in London, and that was a long
long time ago now.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
So her ability.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
To develop her love for the sport, her love for
the paddling, and challenge herself with stepping into a team
environment and the K four and developing the peddlers around her,
it's just this constant way that she sort of looks
to challenge herself and to grow and to learn, And
I think that's what us younger girls have picked up on,
(31:02):
is that you're never done. It's never a finished project.
There's always more you can do, even if it's just
a mindset shift or I'm gonna lean into this session,
or I'm going to be a bit more vulnerable in
my conversations. There's all these ways that she still improves
and still pushes herself, and I think that's something that
(31:24):
us girls have tried to lean into as well, and
I think that's pretty inspiring, inspiring that she can just
keep doing that year after year.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
See, your influence is huge, I should and look at
you all taking off and you've all got your hair
done the same way as Lisa. What was the story
with that?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
So in twenty nineteen, when I went on my first
Open Worlds campaign, I had obviously come from the junior
level where we used to all played each other's hair
and everything. And so when I, as a young one,
went onto this open to her, I thought they were
just being nice to me and said.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Like, oh, do you want to plant my hair for racing?
Speaker 4 (32:02):
And so in twenty nineteen I did all the girls
hair for their K four and I was racing in
the K two and did Lisa's hair for her K one,
and I thought that was so special.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
That she was wearing the braids that I had given them.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
And then turns out they actually loved them, and turns
out they were also aerodynamic, So there was all these
layers that I didn't even know were going on. I
just thought they were trying to include me and be
really nice to me, but it seems to have stuck.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, you know, it takes me back to when Ferg
and Macca came out with dark glasses and the opposition
were freaked. Yeah, you know, wouldn't you stop and you
think about the legacy of your sport. Those two guys
(32:50):
are right up there. Have you had much to do
with either of them?
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean obviously I wasn't in the world when
they were racing, so I haven't obviously seen it live,
but I have obviously heard the stories. I've met them,
and right from when I was I think I was
eleven or twelve years old and Paul McDonald was commentating
one of the Little Blue Lake rerigettas that we hold
and I'd won my first race as a little eleven
(33:15):
year old and I was so tiny, but he asked
me to paddle over to him so that he could
interview me. And I remember sitting there and I'm normally
a bit of a chatterbox, but I was a bit
lost for words. And I remember making eye contact with
my mum and dad on the beach, and I was
trying to tell them, look, I mean, look, Paul McDonald's
interviewing me, and I was so tiny, but I don't
(33:36):
even remember what he said, but I remember I felt
so special and I felt like I had just won
the Olympics. So it's just amazing how much impact they
can have on young athletes, and that's why I want
to keep going into schools and that sort of thing.
So I don't know them super well, but I have
loved watching what they've done for our sport and the
contact I have had with them.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Oh su a real one. At you pace to live
a long time, you know these things. I think that
Paul McDonald taught your uncle Tony orderly and Phy said
at Takapuna Grammar, because he came to Takapuna Grammar. I
recall it well because I it was part of the
appointment of him and extraordinary guy. But the big name
(34:23):
of course was Ferg. Have you met him?
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (34:26):
They obviously have a huge names in our sport, and
I'm so grateful that the work they've done has still
carried on. I mean, I still see their family rolling
around surf carnivals. I mean they're so involved that it
is pretty awesome, and that's sort of inspired us to
stay involved all the ways that we can.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's sporting lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
The K four that won the World Championships in twenty
twenty three, it was the same one that took out
the gold in Paris, and that was amazing feat in itself,
But the other two aren't talked about as much, So
please tell us about Olivia Brett and Tara Vaughan.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
I love getting to talk about my teammates.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
So I'll start with the theme that we have for
the K four, and that's a four plat So we
have four individual and really unique strands that we weave
together to create something really strong. So that's the sort
of analogy or metaphor that we use. And I'll start
with Olivia and she's an extremely strong and powerful athlete,
(35:39):
and let's just say I'm glad that she's on my team,
but she also has a really awesome story and journey
from where she's come from. And we actually used to
race together when we were under eighteens, when we were juniors,
So we're in a K two together and we've come
a long way since then, and it's so cool to
see the woman that she's grown into. And she's such
(35:59):
an asset to our team. So if you haven't heard
her story, you can go and read up on it
because there's been some amazing articles done on her. And
then Tarat when we were in twenty twenty three and
won the World Champs, she was only nineteen, I'm pretty sure,
and so that makes her twenty at the Olympics when
we won gold. So what an incredible young athlete. It's
extremely impressive the rise she's had in the sport. So
(36:22):
she's a talented young peddler. But she also comes from
a really cool family. They've come from the surf club background,
and so she's all about community. She's all about teamwork,
and even when my partner Elliott goes away out of town,
I'm invited to their house for family dinner night, and
just the love that she comes from.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
She really brings into our team. So they're both such
amazing young woman and yeah, I'm really glad they're on
our team.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I guess the question that a lot of people are
asking is that you were chosen, presumably by Gordon and Lisa,
to be the second peddler in the K two. She's
thirty five. Now do you have an aim to be
the K one padleer for New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
I mean, I'm so passionate about the team boats. It's
really been my priority for a long time and we'll
probably continue to be. I love the K four project
that we've been doing, and I love the teamwork, and
I've loved the K two, So I mean, I can
never say what the future holds because I'm genuinely not sure,
(37:30):
but I know that my passion lies within the team.
So if I was to step out in a K one,
it would still have to be very involved within a team,
since so who knows what boats will be racing and
what girls will be around. But yeah, my priority is
definitely the team.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Can you make a living out of kayaking?
Speaker 4 (37:49):
The short answer is yes, and we're got amazing support
from High Performance Sport New Zealand and Canoe racing New
Zealand through the junior campaigns. It obviously takes a huge,
massive village of people to support you through that because
those are self funded. So I'm extremely privileged to have
gone to multiple regattas before I got to the open level,
(38:14):
and that's in a huge investment from my family and
people that have supported our fundraising gigs and that kind
of thing. So I'll be forever grateful for those opportunities.
But as you get to a high performance level, depending
on your level, you do get funding, but you also
start getting sponsorship opportunities and you're able to sort of
(38:34):
treat it as a full time job, which is really
important for us because we need to be able to
do that to take on countries that have been in
the sport doing it professional for years.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
So yeah, we do get really well.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
Supported by high performance canoe racing and sponsorship.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I've read where you had a raffle and an auction
to support your Olympic campaign your personal one. Do you
think that sort of and keeps you grounded totally?
Speaker 4 (39:02):
I mean, one thing that I love to do is
work for what I get, So I love to do
the work. I love to sort of help support my
own campaign, and as a team, we love to support
our team campaign as well. So when you're trying to
compete to be the best in the world, you're going
to need to level up different parts of the campaign
and you're going to need to work for getting different
(39:24):
needs met so that you can truly turn up and
focus on what you're there to do. So I use
that sort of fundraising time as a way to make
sure I had everything I needed to be able to
go away for four months to prepare for the Olympics,
to have the equipment that I needed to do that,
and just to make sure that I could do the
(39:45):
work justice by the time I got to that one
moment where I needed to make it count. So I'm
so grateful to have that village that supported me through
my campaign, and it's just been awesome to involve people
in the journey. I still hear feedback from that event
and I got them all trying a k one and
just to be able to share the journey that was
(40:05):
so special. So yeah, they still talk about how I
took them paddling and we had a big Kiwi barbecue,
and just building those relationships with people has been really special.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yes, if everything's given to you. I think you don't
know where you're going, but if you've had to work
for it, you know what you put into it totally.
I'll share this story with you because it had a
profound effect on me at the time. It was in
the nineteen seventies. There was a hill called Air Street
in Parnell and I remember watching Dick Quax, who was
(40:43):
one of the great New Zealand runners, running up at
back Down, running up at back Down. About five or
six days later, I'm in a pub in Newmarket and
then comes Dick quacks Worth a pig and a barrow,
selling tickets so that he could get to the Commonwealth Games.
(41:06):
And I've never forgotten it because I thought, God, that
would only happen in New Zealand and it was extraordinary.
Do you have as a result of not as a result,
but as part of the whole thing. Have you now
got commercial sponsors yourself?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (41:23):
So Bailey Skisbourne supported me through the Paris campaign and
leading into Paris and then post Paris Is Obviously the
landscape's changed a little bit since I left, and I've
had some really cool opportunities, but I am also taking
my time because it is a new thing that I'm
experiencing post the Paris Olympics. So yeah, my mum is
(41:47):
helping me and acting sort of like a manager at
the moment because she's someone I trust and someone that
obviously my values are extremely aligned with. So I felt
really confident in her helping represent me during these new
conversations that we're having. So right now, I've just been
enjoying doing the speaking gigs and sharing my story and
(42:07):
sharing our journey. But yeah, we are in the works
of sort of getting those commercial partnerships.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
So your immediate goals then are to continue the speaking
and publicizing your sport, am I right? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
I love it. In long term, what are they Yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Mean we're pretty much about to start getting back in
the boat again. Oh yeah, so I'm really looking forward.
I'm so ready to get back in the boat and
get back out on the water, and I am excited
to go for the la Olympics. But obviously sport is
extremely unpredictable, and so as much as that is my intention,
(42:44):
I'll do everything in my power to be able to
do that, but also just enjoying the time post Paris.
I mean, these experiences don't come along all the time,
so I'm really just trying to soak that up and
take that as motivation into the next season.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I'd really like to know what you felt like first
when you come across the winning the winning line K
two and then K four, what are your emotions?
Speaker 4 (43:14):
I mean, the K four race, like I had mentioned earlier,
it takes so many things to line up to be
able to win that event, so to cross the line
and actually realize that we did it. And there's so
many of our support staff that have had this K
four dream long before we even turned up, So the
technology we're using and the training programs and the physiology
(43:35):
and all these things, so there's so many people that
invested into that performance. So it's been so cool to
celebrate with them, and it was just pure joy. There
were so many tears from so many of our support staff,
our coaches, us skills, So that one was a really
cool experience. And then the K two was obviously an
(43:56):
extremely special race. But the last one hundred meters of
the race, the water is extremely choppy because we had
a slight side wind that was bouncing off the grandstand
area and creating quite choppy water. So I genuinely didn't
know where the other boats were, but I was just
so focused on keeping our technique, keeping in synchronization that
(44:18):
it wasn't until we crossed the finish line that it
actually realized what we'd done.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
So that was also just pure joy.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
And to be able to experience that with Lisa, with
Tara and Olivia right there on the dock waiting for us,
and they'd lost their voice from cheering us on was
just such a cool experience to share with our whole team.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
You'd murdered them in the K too, when you think
about it, you really did, didn't you.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
I mean, those girls like they are pretty amazing athletes.
So we lined up with genuinely no expectations and we
just raced our hearts out out there, and it was
incredible to see what we could do.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
What people will want to know the answers Carrington takes
off like a bullet. What people haven't asked is how
did the rest of you keep up with us? Because
that's critical as well.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Yeah, I mean we all have to follow the same
strategy for a team boat to work, so all four
of us in the K for one of our strengths
is sprinting. So myself, Tara and Olivia, we, yeah, one
of our strengths is sprinting, so we've got to be
able to do the whole first phase of the race
really well. And it's something that our whole boat could
(45:28):
do without necessarily burning all our matches in the first half.
So we wanted to be able to have speed reserve,
we call it. So we wanted to be able to
do that really quick start without necessarily just burning all
our cookies so that we couldn't finish the race strong.
So yeah, it's been carefully calculated and we've trained for
(45:49):
exactly the way that we wanted to race.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
What did your dead and mum say to you after
you'd won them?
Speaker 4 (45:57):
I mean, the weird thing about the Olympics is as
soon as you get off the water, you've got to
go through about an hour and a half to two
hours of media and the metal ceremony and all these things,
so you don't actually get to see your family until
like a bit after the race. So I was so
looking forward to seeing them, and as soon as I
saw them, I just burst into tears, and so did they,
(46:19):
And so not many words were spoken because we're sort
of in between Tissoes and we're just holding each other
in a hug and sort of just all these memories
of peddling on Christmas morning, or my mum doing all
this wet geart like washing.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Just came flooding back.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
And to realize that I haven't necessarily made sacrifices for this,
because this is exactly what I wanted to be doing
and what I love to do. But it's all the
people around you that make sacrifices to be able to
support you. And they wouldn't like me saying that, because
they also have loved the journey, but to see the
way that they find actually made it to Paris to
(47:01):
be able to support me in all these other events.
But then yeah, just the way like my dad would
be out there paddling with me on the Gisbon River
when I go home for our holidays or whatever. They've
transported my boat around the country so that I can train. They've,
like I said, done piles of wet washing, so to
share that experience with them, Yeah, we really had no
(47:23):
words in the moment.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Well, I think one of the things that people are
going to get out of listening to this is the
closeness of your family and the wonderful community that you
come from, and then the smaller community that has worked
so hard, the community of the people on the boat.
Wish you well, hope that you're going to be at LA. Yeah,
(47:45):
you know that's the immediate aime, and I can understand that.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Totally awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Thank you so much for spending the time with us today.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such
a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Olympic gold medalist Alisha Hoskin or a beautiful person and
that came through so much in the interview and it
was such a pleasant thing to be talking about Gisbone
in the canoe community. There was another episode of Burrydeka's
Sporting Lives, brought to you by Callaway. If you enjoyed
(48:23):
this episode, please follow the podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever
you get your podcasts, and we'll be back first Thursday
next month. On Murray Deeka's Sporting Lives
Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway, the
leading manufacturer of premium golf clubs, balls and accessories worldwide.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, I'm Murray Deek here. Welcome to my podcast, Murray
Deeker's Sporting Lives. During my career, I've spent forty years
interviewing the biggest names in sport and I'm thrilled to
bring you this podcast talking to sporting legends and giving
you a look into their world, to hear their memories,
their stories and some opinion too. Today we're going back
(00:34):
to one of the big Olympic success stories. My guest
today the double Olympic champion, winning gold in both the
K two and K four at the Paris Olympics. Alisha
Hoskin joins.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
US Gold Sport presents Murray Deeker's Sporting Lives with Calloway.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Alisha Hoskin is more than just the woman sitting behind
Lisa Carrington and the canoe well as if that isn't enough,
her story is inspirational on so many fronts. She epitomizes
the best in our key. We site her courage, her tenacity,
her stubbornness and her athleticism. They make her a very
(01:21):
special New Zealander. The more I've read about her and
talk to people about her, the more special I've come
to realize she is. Alisia. I'm privileged to have you
on this program.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Thank you for coming, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Look, can we start right back at the beginning. What
is it about Gisbone that produces top kayakers and canoeists?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Totally?
Speaker 4 (01:45):
I mean Gisbon is an extremely special place and holds
a very special place.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
In my heart.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
And I think it comes down to the landscape that's there.
I mean we're surrounded by waterways and Gisbon athletes have
excelled in waka ama surf, life saving swimming. I mean,
we just have a real love and connection for the
water down there, and I think it's one of the
busiest little rivers that I've ever been on. So we're
(02:10):
always trying to make way for each other. And yeah,
it's just so awesome to see the environment down there,
and I think that's what makes special peddlers come out
of there.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Then, so many different levels.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
How did you get started?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Then? So I have an older sister, Courtney, who's about
a year and a half older than me, and I
as a little sister, I just had big heart eyes
for her and I wanted to do things that she did.
So when she started peddling for the first time, I
could see how much she loved it, and I so
wanted to be like her. I so wanted to go
(02:41):
and meet her friends down at the kayak club. So
she really sparked my interest in kayaking. And so then
when I got the opportunity to go to the Ames
Games and compete in the multi sport, I obviously got
to learn how to kayak. So I was down at
the local club learning how to not fall out pretty much.
And that's where I really enjoyed the challenge of it,
(03:03):
and I thought, this is what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
We've all seen recently you at the Ames Game again,
this time handing out medals, and you know it's a
special event. This isn't it totally?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I mean the turnout of the amount of kids that
go to Aims Games and to see it just growing
year after year and to see them massive smiles on
their face.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
You know, it's more than just going down there to
win a meddle.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It's about representing your school, getting to go out and
compete with a whole group of friends, and even going
down there myself. You know, I'm not necessarily going down
to find the next Olympian or find the next Kayaker.
I just want to see those kids get outside, be
active and just do some things that they're absolutely passionate about.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So I'm just there to encourage them.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Really about agen thousand off of them, I think, oh, it's.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
A huge turnout, and man, what an awesome thing for
our country.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It is. It's brilliant. So Courtney has had an influence
on you. And of course she then gets selected for
the two thy fifteen World Junior Champs. Did that fire
your ambition up more?
Speaker 4 (04:11):
It?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Totally? Did?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I mean to see how hard she worked that I
really got an appreciation and understanding for what it took
to make a New Zealand team, and I knew that
something that I wanted to do. So when she got
sent her first piece of New Zealand kit, I remember
her opening it and I was so excited for her
because it obviously means so much to put on a
(04:33):
black singlet, to put on the silver fern, and I
could see how much she had worked for it and
how much joy she got from experiencing all of that,
so I knew that something that I wanted to do,
and you.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Became a member of the Poverty Bay Kayak Club. It
was there that you began to be coached by the
nineteen eighty four Olympian Liz Thompson told me about her.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, I mean, what an awesome opportunity to be coached
by ex Olympians. But I think something special that did
was she was able to bring so many young women
into our sports. So I was actually at the club
during a time of so many cool young females. There
was my sister's age group, and then lots of us
in my age group, and we had a really cool
little community going and we'd play soccer on the field
(05:18):
next to the river before we got on. But they
also really encouraged getting out in teamboats, so that was
my first time sitting in a K four and sitting
in a K two. So to have those skills right
from a young age was really really good for what
I ended up doing. But the club was also in
a position where they could bring over a coach from Hungary,
(05:38):
and Hungary has a huge legacy in our sport, so
they had the resources to be able to bring him
over and so then when I moved to him coaching me,
it developed my love more for the structured training. And
I was in my final years of school and he
really believed that I could take it to high performance level.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
So I was really cooled have.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Both Liz in my early years developing just that love
for the team and the peddling, and then to have
the opportunity to be coached by our Hungarian coach that
developed my love for the more high performance style of peddling.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
There's a earn in time in your life because you're
also head prefect of Gisboo and Girls High School. Now,
unlike many other form of teachers, I have real question
marks about head prefix. In prefix, I think they get
too much put on their plate and too many demands
put on them. What was it like for you?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Ah?
Speaker 4 (06:35):
So that's very true, but it's also really taught me
the responsibility and how I needed to plan my week
and plan my day, and those are skills that I've
taken into my life beyond school. So I am really
grateful to have had that responsibility.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
But it was in a year where I was.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Selected for my first junior team, so I was training
for that, but it was also the year that I
had my heart complications, and it was awesome the year
that I was trying to study to be able to
do my exams to a really high level. So there
was a lot on my plate and I did really
enjoy that responsibility, but it did teach.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Me a lot of character building.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
In that year of twenty seventeen, you're selected for the
Junior Canoe Sprint World Champs and you go for a
routine pre departure health check and the cardiology test said
that you had a wolf Park and White syndrome, which
(07:37):
no one listening to this program will have a clue
what that is, what is it and how will you
treat it?
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Yeah, so wolf Park in some White syndrome is pretty
much when you have an extra electrical pathway in your
heart and it causes these almost like a short circuit,
So it causes these periods of rapid heart rate that
can be quite dangerous when you're out there training and
pushing your heart rate to a really high level. So yeah,
like you said, I had just done these routine health
(08:05):
checks prior to leaving for the twenty seventeen Junior Worlds,
which my first Junior World. So I was so excited
and I was training so hard for it, and then
so I did these checks and thought nothing of it.
I thought, you know, that's just going to give my
parents peace of mind to send me overseas in good
shape and they won't worry about me too much. So yeah,
(08:26):
I carried on training after the tests had been done.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And so a week or.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
So later, my coach had a call while I was
paddling on the water and I was doing this two
k time trial, which is one of the hardest things
we did back then, and after one of them, she said,
I've just had a call from your dad. He's asked
you to get off the water and go and call
them back. And I thought, you know, that's really odd,
getting us to get pulled out of training. So I
(08:52):
walk upstairs in the clubroom call my dad and he said,
we've got your results back from your ECG one of
the tests that i'd had, and you've got what's called
wolfparkins in white syndrome, and it's actually unsafe for you
to be training right now until we do some more
tests see what it's about. And so I think I
ended up hanging up on him and I just burst
(09:14):
into tears in the clubrooms because I didn't know at
that point if I was ever going to be able
to do sport again, and I knew how much joy
it brought me and my life and my family. We're
all extremely active. So I had this moment of one,
what if I'm never allowed to be back in a
boat again, But what if that means no sport in general?
(09:36):
And who am I without sport? I mean, that was
it wasn't part of my identity, but I knew it's
something that I absolutely love to do, and it was
kind of a terrifying thought to not have sport in
my life. So yeah, we underwent more and more tests
and ended up having to get an ablation. So the
ablation is where they go in and fry that little
(09:58):
extra electrical path way pretty much. So yeah, I had
to undergo that oblation.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
How did they go in? It wasn't open heart surgery,
was it.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
No, it wasn't an open heart surgery, and I really
should know the vein that they use, but it's an
extremely technical thing. So they go through so it's just
like a keyhole surgery, so there's very minimal scarring. It's
not open or anything, and they managed to thread this
little needle that does the frying through the wall of
my heart and able to go in and find where
(10:32):
they need to.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Do the work.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Were you scared?
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Oh yeah, but I kind of. I kind of remember
treating it a bit like a game day. I was
so focused. I was like, Yep, I got this. I've
gotta be brave. I can take this on. But I
do remember saying goodbye to my parents as they rolled
me through the hospital, and little tear dripped down my
face because I knew that I was scared, but also
(10:55):
at that point I was like, Okay, this is gonna
set me up to be able to do what I
love again.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Have there been any repeats of that type of thing?
And how often are you checked?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:07):
So, after the ablation was done, they said it was successful,
but obviously they need to keep checking that to make
sure that it stays that way. So for mine, I
was lucky enough that the ablation did work and they
were able to attack the right area to make sure
that I wasn't going to get these periods of rapid
heart rate or danger when I went to a high
(11:31):
heart rate in my training or my competition, and so
A year following the surgery was my final check. So
in twenty eighteen, the end of twenty eighteen, I got
my final appointment done and everything was still looking good,
and they said I have just as much chance as
anyone else to have any other heart complications again. So
(11:52):
they said, no need to worry about it.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Do you have any special precautions that you still take?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Ah, not at this stage.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
So yeah, like I said, I've got just as much
risk as anyone else now. So obviously I do things
to keep a healthy heart, and I think one scare
is enough for a lifetime. You're going to do the
right things to look after your body. But yeah, like
everyone should.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I had open heart surgery in two thousand and five
and they went in and they had to do five
bypassers at the time and revasculating one side of the heart,
and I rang up the surgeon who happened to be
a friend of mine and said to him, you know,
how bad is it? And he said, your heart is
(12:38):
as good as anyone else's as long as you don't smoke.
And if you start smoking, murray, don't come back. And
I think that you've got it. You know, there are
certain things that.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
You then have to do totally and if I.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Get a bit dizzy, I stop.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That's enough for me. Did one cardiol just at that
time tell you about a runner in America that gave
you some hope?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
So cardiologists are actually incredible people. And I was lucky
enough to have doctor Martin Styles. So he has got
all these accolades in his profession, and I trusted him
so much, and he had operated on a few other
athletes as well at the time, and so he knew
(13:26):
how much I wanted to get back out on the water.
And so he had told me this story of another
girl who was a runner, and she had had the
same thing as me and had a successful oblation and
she'd managed to reach the top level in her sport again.
And it just gave me that little glimpse of hope
that I needed through the recovery and to get back
(13:49):
out on the water again and have confidence in my
body again. But he's also the same cardiologist that did Robodell.
And so then when Robdell was the Chef de mission
and at the Tokyo Olympics, I went up to him
and said I had the same cardiologist as you, and
so that was quite exciting just to meet other people
along the journey. And I think that's why I've been
(14:10):
passionate about sharing that story because yeah, I know that
it helped me when I was in that hospital bed,
and hopefully that story can help others.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well. I found it, you know, inspiring, the fact that
by twenty nineteen you were prepared to come to Auckland
to train full time, leaving at home, leaving it you
know what obviously is a very loving, caring family us
A weeve it about your family before we talk about
the shift.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean, my family are incredible and we've grown up.
They've really developed my love for the outdoors and just
moving my body, and even just to have my sister
and I two daughters, and to be involved in sport
where it's not focused about the way your body looks
or different things. They really fit us a healthy narrative
(14:58):
around sport and that our bodies just help us do
what we love to do. So I'm really grateful for
my parents and the way they've guided me through sport
and high performance. But we did have a conversation before
I left home where I told them I was going
to go to Auckland and then train with the High
Performance women's team.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
This is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
And they did challenge me with a few questions, you know,
like are you sure like this is what you're going
to be signing up for? You sure you know what
you're in for? You know, they just challenged me on
is this the direction you want to take? And here
are the other options of you know, not a backup plan,
but in a way like what do you want to
study or what do you want after sport? Because your
(15:39):
body's not going to be able to compete forever. And
I'm really grateful for those conversations because it's not that
they didn't believe in me. I mean, they backed me
one hundred percent, but it was really healthy to have
those conversations so that I knew exactly why I was
going there, what I was trying to do, and that
I had taken into account, you know, what I wanted
to do with my studies, what I might want to
(16:02):
do after sport, as much as that changes for me
all the time. I'm really grateful for their support. And
then they've been pretty much at every Regetti since and
the only one they couldn't come to was obviously the
Tokyo Olympics. So yeah, it was really awesome to have
them in the stands in Paris and they just had
the best time. I mean they went through tissue boxes.
(16:24):
When my dad was getting so emotional, my mom had
to support him and be the strong woman.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
In the family.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
But yeah, so special to have them chairing their have
them watch the medal ceremonies, and yeah, just share that
experience with them.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
So you leave Gisbone, you're off to Auckland and then
in twenty twenty you're named the canoe sprint Athlete of
the Year and this is at the Canoe Racing New
Zealand's award was Lisa Sick. Now that's no I think
you've been there for that.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, I think it's so funny. I mean that's my
little claim to fame at the time. So Lisa was
completely healthy, but because of COVID, I mean, there was
only a few of us that have had competed that year.
So another athlete and I had headed over to Australia
to try and qualify an extra boat for the Tokyo Olympics.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And we had some really cool results.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Then came home and then the whole country went into lockdown,
so we were really the only ones that had competed
that year, and so when it came around to the
end of year awards, they got named the Athlete of
the Year. I was like, well, I may as well
claim it now, So yeah, that was me.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Great stuff and you know, so it's a lovely thing
to think about, isn't it to have won that then
you were one, you were one of Well we got
four peddlers in my throat today it doesn't matter of
enjoyed this A four peddlers selected for Tokyo. What did
(18:03):
you learn from that experience?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, I guess our sport has had some really cool
results in the past, but it is the second time
that a women's K four has competed in the Olympics,
So in the scheme of the legacy that the countries
like Hungary and Germany have in the sport, we were
quite fresh. So we went there and we learned a
lot about what it takes to race the K four
(18:28):
and what it takes to be a team. So the
K four is an extremely complex boat to race and
to succeed in why because you need four people on
the same page at the same time doing the same strategy,
and if you've been in a K one before, you
know it's an extremely tippy boat. And then you add
four people with the same amount of tippiness, and if
(18:48):
things aren't perfectly in sync, you can get a lean
in the boat, or you can get a wobble, and
that really throws off the speed of the boat. So
to get four girls paddling raally aligned with their technique,
strategy and to have a real sense of connection and
teamwork within that as well is a really unique thing
to line up with all of those components and for
(19:11):
them to all come into line on that one moment
every four years. So it is quite a complex boat
to win, and it's quite a complex event to win.
So yeah, we learned a ton about that in.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Tokyo and get through to the final Tokyo.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yes, and we came forth, so we were close to
the medals. But it really set a foundation for how
we wanted to work the K four and how we
wanted to lean into the teamwork, and how we wanted
to race it in the year's post Tokyo. So I'm
extremely grateful for that experience and it really has sort
(19:49):
of dictated the way that we learn and how we
peddle the boat.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Today, Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's Lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
One of the big breakthroughs in New Zealand sport was
under Arthur Lydiad and he went through a training regime
that you've probably heard about where the guys ran around
the why tackeries around. It was just kill us stuff,
but it was building up a huge body of resilience
(20:23):
and fitness. Do you do the same thing?
Speaker 4 (20:27):
So our training has evolved over the years and I've
come into the sport at a time where it has
been well established for a long time. So we do
need a huge amount of fitness. So we are doing
some massive pedals during the year and we're going round
and round Lake Poop Puckey for a good two hours
two and a half hours sometimes, so we do do
(20:49):
some really big sessions, but we've always got to keep
the component of speed in there as well. We've also
got to keep the component of the strength and the
power element, so it's not a purely fitness space, but
we need that to be able to do all the
following training blocks that lead us into a world champ
so that we can get faster, we can do multiple
(21:11):
races at that high quality and high intensity. So there
are so many components that go into kayaking as well
as the technique of it, so there's a few things
to balance there.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Roughly, how much of your training is physical outside of
the water.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
So we do some massive gym sessions throughout the year,
and it depends what phase of the year that we're in.
So during our gym blocks, we're in the gym four
times a week and those sessions can last up to
two hours in the gym and we're doing a range of.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Max strength, strength, endurance.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
We've got some really fun sessions that I enjoy of
like am raps, so that's as many rips as possible,
So you get given a time like a minute, and
you've got to see how many reps you can do
in that time. And I always love the challenge of
those sessions. So, yeah, it depends what phase of the
year we're in. But a good portion of our workers
off the water as well.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And what about mental training.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Yeah, I mean we do a lot of work off
like that isn't physical. And like I mentioned before, the
K four and even the K two and K one
at this point is really a team game. So we
do some really awesome work around teamwork. So we invest
a lot of time into that, and those can look
(22:31):
like good to our chunks of time where we're together.
We're having really authentic, vulnerable conversations. We're learning how to
create a vision together. We're learning what it takes to
race at this level, what it takes to take on
countries that have a huge legacy in the sport. We're
learning how to get the most out of ourselves but
(22:53):
also the most out of each other. And it's just
really fun game that we're pretty much playing, but it
does take a lot of planning, takes a lot of trust,
So we've invested a lot.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Of time into that.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Who leads that our coaches, so Gordon Walker and Chris
me Hack, so they're level to level of detail around
teamwork is something that is quite incredible, and so many
times people don't probably hear about that side of their
role because as coaches, you'd assume they're really focused on
(23:26):
the physiology and the technique and the training program, which
they are, and they do that to a really high level,
But there's this whole other element of creating a team
and bringing people together that I think is really special.
So they're leading a lot of those conversations and giving
us the skills to be able to take those conversations
on and to be able to learn about each other,
(23:49):
learn about ourselves. And the detail is incredible. I mean
they're always thinking of where should we do the meeting
that helps people feel safe and comfortable? Where how long
should it go for? Do we bring the quality and
the quantity of conversations? You know?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
How do we space them out? Do we do one
a week?
Speaker 4 (24:09):
So there's all these things going on behind the scenes
that mean we can turn up and have do really
awesome work together.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Four of you in the boat. What are the key
aspects then that help you blend as a team that
many of us who aren't kayakers don't appreciate.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
I mean, like I mentioned before, the boat is quite unstable,
so the synchronicity of our movements is really important. So
we've got to agree on a way to peddle so
that our angles are in line our leg drive that's
happening below the spray x so you probably won't see
our leg drives much, but that's got to be really
in sync. The time our blades hit the water. That's
(24:51):
got to all be in time. The time we exit
together is all going to be in time. So there's
a lot of work done around our technique, and I
guess that's why the teamwork is so important, because it
transfers from off the water onto the water, and so
much of that synchronicity comes from the work we do
off the water. So yeah, there's quite a few components
(25:11):
that go into it.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
When you look at this whole thing and what happened
with particularly the K four, it seems to me that
twenty twenty three was the breakthrough year. You go to
the World Championships and you win it, is that the breakthrough?
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I mean totally, But it's so important to acknowledge the
other breakthroughs we've had in our sport. So right back
to what they called the Golden Era of when we
had an awesome men's K four go and win gold
at the Olympics, so that was our first breakthrough. And
then to have Aaron Taylor she was our first female
kayaker at the Olympics, and then followed by Lisa Carrington
(25:52):
obviously is a massive breakthrough for our sport. Her achieving
that high level. And then there's the girls that were
in the k before before us, and so I think
like we've learned a lot and the sport has developed
so much to be in a position where we have
the right support people around us, we have the knowledge,
we have the skill, we know what it's going to take.
(26:14):
So all of those led us to the point in
twenty twenty three where we won the World Championships in
the women's k for and that's never been done before
by a non European country, So it really it was
another breakthrough for our sport, but it was dependent on
all those other steps that had led our team there.
But yeah, just learning what it takes to win that
(26:37):
event has been a massive journey.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
It fascinates me. And I'll tell you why. Sport that
I know a little bit about is rugby union, and
I've seen the focus go on the top of the pyramid,
the All Blacks, and I've seen rugby union people lose
interest in the heartland, which is the club and the
(27:03):
provincial thing. And now that the All Blacks are not
doing as well, the game's in real trouble. Your sport's
going to have to avoid that because here you have
this huge success at the top. How many canoeists are
there around New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Just a rough figure.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Oh, I don't know if i'd have the rough figure
for you. But the sport has been growing for as
long as I've been around. Our level of kids that
are involved have been growing as well, so national champs
have been getting bigger.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
We're trying to do.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
A lot of work with other water sports at the moment,
so linking in with the surf clubs around New Zealand
because obviously they have a huge influx of kids as well.
So we're trying to sort of work with other water
sports to be able to just create those opportunities for
kids to come into kayaking, to experience it, to learn
water safety. So there's a lot going on at the
(28:00):
grassroots level.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Well make sure it continues, or otherwise you'll fall down
the same hole that rugby Union has. I want to
get down to the nuts and bolts of the success
at this top level. It seems to me one name
comes through all the time and he's never available for
an interview. I don't think I haven't heard him interviewed,
(28:22):
but Gordon Walker is a standout. What makes him such
a brilliant coach?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
I guess it's sort of what I mentioned before, like,
his role is so multifaceted, and you'll often get glimpses
of the more the physical side. So he has a
background in physiology, and he puts together an amazing training
program for us, and he can answer all my questions
around the purpose of every session, what's going to what
(28:48):
adaptions am I going to have in my body? How
does this link towards the next training session, and how
does that link towards racing. So he's able to articulate
and understand our sport and our training. And then there's
the technique element. So here's the ability to know the
fundamentals of the way that we need a user paddle
(29:10):
to make the boat go fast. Add in the team
boat skills, so the ability to race our girls in
the K one, the K two, and the K four
as a whole other project. So you can start to
see the layers of why he is such an amazing coach.
But then you add on the off the water, so
his ability to challenge the team, to be able to
(29:33):
create a space where it's safe enough to have really
vulnerable conversations, to be able to build the culture within
the team. So I think all of those layered upon
each other create a very well rounded coach and I
think that's what's made him so good in the sport.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And despite his success, unquestionably the biggest name in sport
in kayaking and the ugus name in sport is Lisa Carrington.
Why she's so.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Good, I mean, some of the questions you might have
to ask her, but I can speak to what I've
experienced as her teammate and what I admire about her,
and that's pretty much that she isn't really in it
just for a gold medal. And don't get me wrong,
because she is extremely competitive, but she's rarely lent into
(30:27):
this incredible growth and this way that she can keep
improving year after year. Because if she was just doing
it for the gold medal, I'm assuming she would have
stopped way back in London, and that was a long
long time ago now.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
So her ability.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
To develop her love for the sport, her love for
the paddling, and challenge herself with stepping into a team
environment and the K four and developing the peddlers around her,
it's just this constant way that she sort of looks
to challenge herself and to grow and to learn, And
I think that's what us younger girls have picked up on,
(31:02):
is that you're never done. It's never a finished project.
There's always more you can do, even if it's just
a mindset shift or I'm gonna lean into this session,
or I'm going to be a bit more vulnerable in
my conversations. There's all these ways that she still improves
and still pushes herself, and I think that's something that
(31:24):
us girls have tried to lean into as well, and
I think that's pretty inspiring, inspiring that she can just
keep doing that year after year.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
See, your influence is huge, I should and look at
you all taking off and you've all got your hair
done the same way as Lisa. What was the story
with that?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
So in twenty nineteen, when I went on my first
Open Worlds campaign, I had obviously come from the junior
level where we used to all played each other's hair
and everything. And so when I, as a young one,
went onto this open to her, I thought they were
just being nice to me and said.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Like, oh, do you want to plant my hair for racing?
Speaker 4 (32:02):
And so in twenty nineteen I did all the girls
hair for their K four and I was racing in
the K two and did Lisa's hair for her K one,
and I thought that was so special.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
That she was wearing the braids that I had given them.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
And then turns out they actually loved them, and turns
out they were also aerodynamic, So there was all these
layers that I didn't even know were going on. I
just thought they were trying to include me and be
really nice to me, but it seems to have stuck.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, you know, it takes me back to when Ferg
and Macca came out with dark glasses and the opposition
were freaked. Yeah, you know, wouldn't you stop and you
think about the legacy of your sport. Those two guys
(32:50):
are right up there. Have you had much to do
with either of them?
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean obviously I wasn't in the world when
they were racing, so I haven't obviously seen it live,
but I have obviously heard the stories. I've met them,
and right from when I was I think I was
eleven or twelve years old and Paul McDonald was commentating
one of the Little Blue Lake rerigettas that we hold
and I'd won my first race as a little eleven
(33:15):
year old and I was so tiny, but he asked
me to paddle over to him so that he could
interview me. And I remember sitting there and I'm normally
a bit of a chatterbox, but I was a bit
lost for words. And I remember making eye contact with
my mum and dad on the beach, and I was
trying to tell them, look, I mean, look, Paul McDonald's
interviewing me, and I was so tiny, but I don't
(33:36):
even remember what he said, but I remember I felt
so special and I felt like I had just won
the Olympics. So it's just amazing how much impact they
can have on young athletes, and that's why I want
to keep going into schools and that sort of thing.
So I don't know them super well, but I have
loved watching what they've done for our sport and the
contact I have had with them.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Oh su a real one. At you pace to live
a long time, you know these things. I think that
Paul McDonald taught your uncle Tony orderly and Phy said
at Takapuna Grammar, because he came to Takapuna Grammar. I
recall it well because I it was part of the
appointment of him and extraordinary guy. But the big name
(34:23):
of course was Ferg. Have you met him?
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (34:26):
They obviously have a huge names in our sport, and
I'm so grateful that the work they've done has still
carried on. I mean, I still see their family rolling
around surf carnivals. I mean they're so involved that it
is pretty awesome, and that's sort of inspired us to
stay involved all the ways that we can.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Gold Sport presents Murray Digga's sporting lives with Callaway.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
The K four that won the World Championships in twenty
twenty three, it was the same one that took out
the gold in Paris, and that was amazing feat in itself,
But the other two aren't talked about as much, So
please tell us about Olivia Brett and Tara Vaughan.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
I love getting to talk about my teammates.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
So I'll start with the theme that we have for
the K four, and that's a four plat So we
have four individual and really unique strands that we weave
together to create something really strong. So that's the sort
of analogy or metaphor that we use. And I'll start
with Olivia and she's an extremely strong and powerful athlete,
(35:39):
and let's just say I'm glad that she's on my team,
but she also has a really awesome story and journey
from where she's come from. And we actually used to
race together when we were under eighteens, when we were juniors,
So we're in a K two together and we've come
a long way since then, and it's so cool to
see the woman that she's grown into. And she's such
(35:59):
an asset to our team. So if you haven't heard
her story, you can go and read up on it
because there's been some amazing articles done on her. And
then Tarat when we were in twenty twenty three and
won the World Champs, she was only nineteen, I'm pretty sure,
and so that makes her twenty at the Olympics when
we won gold. So what an incredible young athlete. It's
extremely impressive the rise she's had in the sport. So
(36:22):
she's a talented young peddler. But she also comes from
a really cool family. They've come from the surf club background,
and so she's all about community. She's all about teamwork,
and even when my partner Elliott goes away out of town,
I'm invited to their house for family dinner night, and
just the love that she comes from.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
She really brings into our team. So they're both such
amazing young woman and yeah, I'm really glad they're on
our team.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I guess the question that a lot of people are
asking is that you were chosen, presumably by Gordon and Lisa,
to be the second peddler in the K two. She's
thirty five. Now do you have an aim to be
the K one padleer for New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
I mean, I'm so passionate about the team boats. It's
really been my priority for a long time and we'll
probably continue to be. I love the K four project
that we've been doing, and I love the teamwork, and
I've loved the K two, So I mean, I can
never say what the future holds because I'm genuinely not sure,
(37:30):
but I know that my passion lies within the team.
So if I was to step out in a K one,
it would still have to be very involved within a team,
since so who knows what boats will be racing and
what girls will be around. But yeah, my priority is
definitely the team.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Can you make a living out of kayaking?
Speaker 4 (37:49):
The short answer is yes, and we're got amazing support
from High Performance Sport New Zealand and Canoe racing New
Zealand through the junior campaigns. It obviously takes a huge,
massive village of people to support you through that because
those are self funded. So I'm extremely privileged to have
gone to multiple regattas before I got to the open level,
(38:14):
and that's in a huge investment from my family and
people that have supported our fundraising gigs and that kind
of thing. So I'll be forever grateful for those opportunities.
But as you get to a high performance level, depending
on your level, you do get funding, but you also
start getting sponsorship opportunities and you're able to sort of
(38:34):
treat it as a full time job, which is really
important for us because we need to be able to
do that to take on countries that have been in
the sport doing it professional for years.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
So yeah, we do get really well.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
Supported by high performance canoe racing and sponsorship.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I've read where you had a raffle and an auction
to support your Olympic campaign your personal one. Do you
think that sort of and keeps you grounded totally?
Speaker 4 (39:02):
I mean, one thing that I love to do is
work for what I get, So I love to do
the work. I love to sort of help support my
own campaign, and as a team, we love to support
our team campaign as well. So when you're trying to
compete to be the best in the world, you're going
to need to level up different parts of the campaign
and you're going to need to work for getting different
(39:24):
needs met so that you can truly turn up and
focus on what you're there to do. So I use
that sort of fundraising time as a way to make
sure I had everything I needed to be able to
go away for four months to prepare for the Olympics,
to have the equipment that I needed to do that,
and just to make sure that I could do the
(39:45):
work justice by the time I got to that one
moment where I needed to make it count. So I'm
so grateful to have that village that supported me through
my campaign, and it's just been awesome to involve people
in the journey. I still hear feedback from that event
and I got them all trying a k one and
just to be able to share the journey that was
(40:05):
so special. So yeah, they still talk about how I
took them paddling and we had a big Kiwi barbecue,
and just building those relationships with people has been really special.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yes, if everything's given to you. I think you don't
know where you're going, but if you've had to work
for it, you know what you put into it totally.
I'll share this story with you because it had a
profound effect on me at the time. It was in
the nineteen seventies. There was a hill called Air Street
in Parnell and I remember watching Dick Quax, who was
(40:43):
one of the great New Zealand runners, running up at
back Down, running up at back Down. About five or
six days later, I'm in a pub in Newmarket and
then comes Dick quacks Worth a pig and a barrow,
selling tickets so that he could get to the Commonwealth Games.
(41:06):
And I've never forgotten it because I thought, God, that
would only happen in New Zealand and it was extraordinary.
Do you have as a result of not as a result,
but as part of the whole thing. Have you now
got commercial sponsors yourself?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (41:23):
So Bailey Skisbourne supported me through the Paris campaign and
leading into Paris and then post Paris Is Obviously the
landscape's changed a little bit since I left, and I've
had some really cool opportunities, but I am also taking
my time because it is a new thing that I'm
experiencing post the Paris Olympics. So yeah, my mum is
(41:47):
helping me and acting sort of like a manager at
the moment because she's someone I trust and someone that
obviously my values are extremely aligned with. So I felt
really confident in her helping represent me during these new
conversations that we're having. So right now, I've just been
enjoying doing the speaking gigs and sharing my story and
(42:07):
sharing our journey. But yeah, we are in the works
of sort of getting those commercial partnerships.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
So your immediate goals then are to continue the speaking
and publicizing your sport, am I right? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
I love it. In long term, what are they Yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Mean we're pretty much about to start getting back in
the boat again. Oh yeah, so I'm really looking forward.
I'm so ready to get back in the boat and
get back out on the water, and I am excited
to go for the la Olympics. But obviously sport is
extremely unpredictable, and so as much as that is my intention,
(42:44):
I'll do everything in my power to be able to
do that, but also just enjoying the time post Paris.
I mean, these experiences don't come along all the time,
so I'm really just trying to soak that up and
take that as motivation into the next season.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I'd really like to know what you felt like first
when you come across the winning the winning line K
two and then K four, what are your emotions?
Speaker 4 (43:14):
I mean, the K four race, like I had mentioned earlier,
it takes so many things to line up to be
able to win that event, so to cross the line
and actually realize that we did it. And there's so
many of our support staff that have had this K
four dream long before we even turned up, So the
technology we're using and the training programs and the physiology
(43:35):
and all these things, so there's so many people that
invested into that performance. So it's been so cool to
celebrate with them, and it was just pure joy. There
were so many tears from so many of our support staff,
our coaches, us skills, So that one was a really
cool experience. And then the K two was obviously an
(43:56):
extremely special race. But the last one hundred meters of
the race, the water is extremely choppy because we had
a slight side wind that was bouncing off the grandstand
area and creating quite choppy water. So I genuinely didn't
know where the other boats were, but I was just
so focused on keeping our technique, keeping in synchronization that
(44:18):
it wasn't until we crossed the finish line that it
actually realized what we'd done.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
So that was also just pure joy.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
And to be able to experience that with Lisa, with
Tara and Olivia right there on the dock waiting for us,
and they'd lost their voice from cheering us on was
just such a cool experience to share with our whole team.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
You'd murdered them in the K too, when you think
about it, you really did, didn't you.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
I mean, those girls like they are pretty amazing athletes.
So we lined up with genuinely no expectations and we
just raced our hearts out out there, and it was
incredible to see what we could do.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
What people will want to know the answers Carrington takes
off like a bullet. What people haven't asked is how
did the rest of you keep up with us? Because
that's critical as well.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Yeah, I mean we all have to follow the same
strategy for a team boat to work, so all four
of us in the K for one of our strengths
is sprinting. So myself, Tara and Olivia, we, yeah, one
of our strengths is sprinting, so we've got to be
able to do the whole first phase of the race
really well. And it's something that our whole boat could
(45:28):
do without necessarily burning all our matches in the first half.
So we wanted to be able to have speed reserve,
we call it. So we wanted to be able to
do that really quick start without necessarily just burning all
our cookies so that we couldn't finish the race strong.
So yeah, it's been carefully calculated and we've trained for
(45:49):
exactly the way that we wanted to race.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
What did your dead and mum say to you after
you'd won them?
Speaker 4 (45:57):
I mean, the weird thing about the Olympics is as
soon as you get off the water, you've got to
go through about an hour and a half to two
hours of media and the metal ceremony and all these things,
so you don't actually get to see your family until
like a bit after the race. So I was so
looking forward to seeing them, and as soon as I
saw them, I just burst into tears, and so did they,
(46:19):
And so not many words were spoken because we're sort
of in between Tissoes and we're just holding each other
in a hug and sort of just all these memories
of peddling on Christmas morning, or my mum doing all
this wet geart like washing.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Just came flooding back.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
And to realize that I haven't necessarily made sacrifices for this,
because this is exactly what I wanted to be doing
and what I love to do. But it's all the
people around you that make sacrifices to be able to
support you. And they wouldn't like me saying that, because
they also have loved the journey, but to see the
way that they find actually made it to Paris to
(47:01):
be able to support me in all these other events.
But then yeah, just the way like my dad would
be out there paddling with me on the Gisbon River
when I go home for our holidays or whatever. They've
transported my boat around the country so that I can train. They've,
like I said, done piles of wet washing, so to
share that experience with them, Yeah, we really had no
(47:23):
words in the moment.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Well, I think one of the things that people are
going to get out of listening to this is the
closeness of your family and the wonderful community that you
come from, and then the smaller community that has worked
so hard, the community of the people on the boat.
Wish you well, hope that you're going to be at LA. Yeah,
(47:45):
you know that's the immediate aime, and I can understand that.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Totally awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Thank you so much for spending the time with us today.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such
a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Olympic gold medalist Alisha Hoskin or a beautiful person and
that came through so much in the interview and it
was such a pleasant thing to be talking about Gisbone
in the canoe community. There was another episode of Burrydeka's
Sporting Lives, brought to you by Callaway. If you enjoyed
(48:23):
this episode, please follow the podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever
you get your podcasts, and we'll be back first Thursday
next month. On Murray Deeka's Sporting Lives
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