Finn Butcher: Kiwi Olympian on his Gold Medal success in the men's kayak cross

It’s a surreal day for New Zealand's newest Gold Medallist. 

Finn Butcher has won Gold in the men's kayak cross, telling Mike Hosking he still can't quite believe what's happened. 

He says he's been flat out since the race, but it feels pretty good. 

The win sees Butcher become New Zealand’s first ever Olympic champion in the men’s canoe slalom cross event. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To the Games. Of course, it's been a golden knight
fin Butcher the canoe slalom cross. He is a winner
and he is with us. Good morning, good morning, How
are we very well? Indeed warmest congratulations. Does it feel
like you thought it would?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yep, it does. It feels pretty good. It definitely hasn't
sun Cap. We've been we've been flat out since then
with all sorts of things. But yeah, man, I'm pretty
pretty start.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Take us through the event itself. Do you like the
canoe slalom cross? Obviously, because you won gold, you must do,
but as an event, do you like it?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah? I reckon, it's awesome. It's been like it's obviously
the first time in the Games, but yeah, we've been
doing it for quite a while, and it's it's pretty
spectator friendly, you know, like people love to head to head,
love crashes if there's any blood. That's also a bit
of a fan favorite. But yeah, it's it's pretty crazy.

(00:56):
It's it's definitely enjoyable and exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Did you have an assessment of the field going into
the tournament at the start of all of this or not? Really?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, like we knew that most
of the top guys are here. Yeah, there's different qualification
rules and things like that, which which meant maybe one
or two of the the best around the best anyway,
not here, but I think most of the top ten
in the world ranking you here, and we we also
race each other a lot over the season anyways, so

(01:31):
we pretty much pretty much know who's who. And there's
no one coming out of the woodwork randomly at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
So can you is it? Is it cross? Is it crossable?
If you like it? For want of a much better expression,
if you're doing slalom, you can do the cross. If
you can do the cross, you can do the slalom.
Or individual skills needed.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, I mean a lot of people, well, most of
us double up. It's definitely there's some there's some individual skills,
but you know, like most of our fitness and strength
workers all coming from from our slalom training, and then yeah,

(02:11):
we're pretty much all of us would have started and
slalom really and then gone from there. But even know,
maybe you know, in the next ten years we might
see some some specialists coming out, but at the moment, yeah,
most people were doubling up.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
You got friends and family to celebrate with you.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I do, Yeah, I do. I'm pretty excited to get
to them. They are meeting us out at New Zealand
House a bit later on, so yeah, once we once
were clear out of the venue and get things moving,
I hopefully catch up with them. That they were all
at the course today, so I was bloody good to
have them in the stands.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Man, I reckon, it was all right mate, go well,
appreciate it very much for Butcher. Kayak slalom Cross is
what we're officially calling that, but a golds of gold
and we're happy about that. Or from the mic Asking Breakfast.
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