The Paris Dossier – Day 9

Kiwi canoe slalom legend Luuka Jones is determined to end her fifth Olympic Games on a high note – inspired by fellow veteran Emma Twigg’s silver medal on the rowing course next door. The 2016 silver medallist is convincingly through to the quarterfinals of the crazy kayak cross event.
In an otherwise quiet day, other wāhine found it gruelling on the water, the shooting range and the streets of Paris. But be prepared for a long night, with the mixed team’s triathlon, our trio of pole vaulters and track cycling getting underway.
“I’m all in.”
Luuka Jones has found her happy place at these Paris Olympics, in a plastic boat scrapping with other paddlers for the lead in the new kayak cross event.
The 2016 K1 silver medallist had been waiting for the chance to prove her strength in the new event, having won the dress rehearsal, the Paris World Cup, a year ago.
She powered to victory in her heat overnight to move into the quarterfinals – as did our male medal chance, Finn Butcher.
“You can’t take anything for granted here. I had to go out and execute a good race,” said Jones, who finished eighth in the K1 final last week.
As a kid growing up on Tauranga’s Wairoa River, Jones learned to paddle in plastic kayaks, perfecting her Eskimo roll – part of the new kayak cross event. It’s given her a distinct advantage, she reckons.
She was fourth fastest in Saturday’s time trial, second in the first round and dominated in her heat – quickly jostling into the lead and leaving the other three paddlers well in her wake. Now she’s gunning for the final in the early hours of Tuesday (NZT).
Behind Jones, her wily Australian rival, Jessica Fox – gold medallist in the K1 last week – was eliminated in her heat. It’s a ruthless race.
Three years after sailing in an Olympics with a fractured leg, Erica Dawson has stormed through the Nacra multihull fleet, with partner Micah Wilkinson, to sit in second place overall.
Dawson and Wilkinson are halfway through their regatta in Marseille, and haven’t finished any lower than seventh – with two seconds and two thirds.
“I can’t quite find the tears because I shed them all this past week.”
– Defender Vanessa Gilles after Olympic football champions Canada were knocked out on penalties in the quarterfinals by 2016 champions Germany  (keeper Ann-Katrin Berger was the hero, saving two and scoring the winning penalty). The credibility of Canadian football is now in tatters, caught spying on the Football Ferns.
It’s been a privilege, says Emma Twigg.
For 18 years – bar the two-year stint she ‘retired’ after just missing a medal for the second time at the Rio Olympics – Twigg has given everything she’s had to pursuing success in the single scull. She’s been a world champion, an Olympic gold medallist, and now the silver she won in Vaires-sur-Marne on Saturday night – at her fifth Games – carries exactly the same weighting.
Things weren’t easy for the defending Olympic champ this time around. She juggled first-time motherhood, a medical scare (an unusual blood reading that led to a heart condition worry), and the aches and pains that naturally come with putting your body through hours of training on the water every day for near on two decades.
But with every race in Paris, Twigg felt stronger. And she gave everything she had in the final, coming close to mowing down Dutch rower Karolien Florijn (11 years her junior), who now wears Twigg’s crown.
“To have the race of my life and be there with Karolien – who I’ve been chasing for the last three years – was equally as special. And sharing it with her as well… we’ve formed an awesome friendship,” Twigg says.
“The medals are just the cherry on top of everything else that goes into it – the journey, the training which is what I love, the friendships. Medals are amazing, but when your sole focus is the medal, then you can be pretty disappointed when things don’t work out. It’s been a real privilege to have the career that I have.”
This wasn’t exactly Twigg’s swansong. She’s off to the world coastal rowing champs in Italy next month (but quickly dispels any suggestion she’ll row in that new Olympic event in four year’s time). And of course she gets to spend more time with two-year-old Tommy – who was a little confused by all the fuss around his mum.
“Hopefully one day he’ll be able to put on Mumma’s medals and be really proud of what I’ve done,” Twigg said, knowing the gold and silver will probably live in Tommy’s toy box. “Hopefully he feels like he can chase his dreams too.”

She may have finished her full-on Paris campaign with an eighth in the 800m freestyle final, but Erika Fairweather swimming in four Olympic finals at the age of 20 has to be applauded.
The Dunedin swimmer was the dynamo of the NZ swim team in Paris – fourth in the 400m, 7th in the 200m, and eighth in the 4x200m freestyle relay. With four more years of experience behind her, Fairweather should be a stronger medal candidate in her third Olympics in Los Angeles.
“That was all I had left in the tank,” she told Sky Sport after the 800m final (won sensationally by American Katie Ledecky for the fourth Olympics in a row). “I’m pretty buggered after this week, but I’m really proud how I ended up.
“Physically I was prepared for this – I didn’t realise how much of an emotional toll this week would have on me.”

A downhearted Zoe Hobbs felt she let herself down in her 100m semifinal at Stade de France on Sunday, letting a rare opportunity slip through her fingers.
Hobbs was sixth in 11.13s – well below her personal best (10.96s) and slower than she ran in the heats (11.08s) the night before, when she felt relaxed and smooth running into a head wind.
“I just didn’t execute the race I wanted,” Hobbs told Sky Sport. “Usually the start is the strong part of my race, and I wasn’t out as far ahead as I would usually be at the 10 [metres]. Usually if I get out well over the first 10, 20, 30, I can fly home. At that point I think I started to tense up…and I got a little bit lost in the end.”
Nevertheless, Hobbs became only the second Kiwi woman to reach the semifinals against the fastest women in the world – 96 years after Norma Wilson competed in the first Games where women were allowed in track and field. “I’ve been doing this sport since the age of five, and this is a landmark I’ve always wanted to hit. So a moment I can be really proud of,” Hobbs said.
Lauren Bruce was “a little gutted” she couldn’t hurl the hammer far enough to land in the hammer throw final – her best throw of 68.93m well short of the automatic qualifying mark of 73m and leaving her 20th overall.
In her first Olympics, windsurfer Veerle ten Have was eliminated in the quarterfinal race, to finish 10th overall. The Tauranga 23-year-old needed to win to make the semis, but made a wrong call early in the race and ended up seventh.
“I’m proud of how I sailed. It’s not the result I wanted, but I left everything out there,” ten Have said. “It’s a dream come true being here, being able to represent New Zealand, and being 10th is pretty special.”
Meanwhile other Olympic sailing rookies were finding it tough in Marseille. Greta Pilkington is 28th in the single-handed dinghy overnight after eight of her 10 races, while Justina Kitchen got her kite surfing campaign underway with a top 10 finish in her first race and sits in 15th place overall.
Our two cyclists in the road race, Niamh Fisher-Black and Kim Cadzow, finished 31st and 56th respectively after being caught behind a crash and were unable to make up lost time.
Chloe Tipple is out of the skeet shooting competition – ending up 28th in the field of 29 in her third Olympics. The top six went through to the final.
And triathon organisers again canned the swim training ahead of the mixed team’s relay because – surprise, surprise – of the poor water quality in the River Seine. Hopefully the race still gets to go ahead tonight (NZT).
St Lucia, a small island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean, erupted into joyously hysterical celebration after Julien Alfred won the country’s first Olympic gold medal with her victory in the women’s 100 metres. Alfred ran a blistering 10.72s to beat reigning world champion, Sha’Carri Richardson of the United States, for the second time in the day.
Just how shocking was it? Ranked 17th in the world, Alfred only came away with bronze from the 2022 Commonwealth Games. She took up serious sprinting after her father died in 2013, when her family moved to Jamaica, home of her idol, Usain Bolt.
Alfred was the first non-Jamaican to win the 100m since Yuliya Nesterenko won gold for Belarus at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Two-time Olympic champion, Shelley-Anne Fraser-Pryce, from Jamaica was a mysterious absence. The official word from the Jamaican Athletics Federation is that Fraser-Pryce had suffered an injury, but a video had already surfaced of the athlete having trouble getting past security to enter the warm-up track from the wrong gate.
Fraser-Pryce has yet to confirm whether she was injured or if it was officious administration that led to her withdrawal.  The Olympics isn’t without examples of the latter. In 1960, 800m runner Wym Essajas, became Suriname’s first Olympian. Sadly, he was given the wrong starting time for the qualifying heats and ended up sleeping through the event (won by Sir Peter Snell). Suriname waited eight more years for another Olympian.
“We’re coming to the end of Luuka Jones‘ fifth Olympic campaign, and she’ll want to go out in the style she deserves in the new kayak cross event,” says LockerRoom writer and NZ Olympian No. 1134, Sarah Cowley Ross.
“If this is her final Olympics, she leaves behind the incredible ‘Luuka Legacy’ – which has seen the popularity of canoe slalom rise and rise in New Zealand.
“And it’s a day of firsts for speed climber Sarah Tetzlaff and wrestler Tayla Ford, as their Olympic dreams finally come true. Tetzlaff is in really good shape, having done a personal best time at her final preparation camp, so she’ll want to show what she’s got as she scales that wall like Spiderwoman!”
Sailor Tom Saunders is hanging on to a medal chance in the men’s dinghy class in Marseille, sitting in seventh. Men’s golfers Ryan Fox and Daniel Hillier ended up well outside the medals – Fox (-2) in a tie for 35th; Hillier (+7) in 55th.
Injuries plagued our track and field men – two-time bronze medallist and Timaru builder Tom Walsh ending his shotput final after three throws with a serious groin injury (but fellow Kiwi Jacko Gill finishing seventh); 1500m runner Sam Tanner was bundled out in the repechage, revealing he hadn’t got over an achilles injury.
Triathlon – Nicole van der Kaay, Dylan McCullough, Hayden Wilde, Ainsley Thorpe; mixed team relay, 6pm
Athletics – Eliza McCartney, Olivia McTaggart, Imogen Ayris; pole vault qualifying, 8.40 pm
Sailing – Erica Dawson, Micah Wilkinson, Nacra17, 10pm; Justina Kitchen, kite foil, races 5-8, 10.15pm; Great Pilkington, dinghy, 10.15 pm.
Sport Climbing – Sarah Tetzlaff, speed qualification seeding, 11pm; elimination, 11.40 pm
Wrestling – Tayla Ford, freestyle 68kg, 1/8 elimination, 1am, 1/4 elimination, 2.20am; semifinal, 7.40 am
Canoe/Kayak – Luuka Jones, KX quarterfinal, 2.15am; semifinal, 2.43am; big final 2.55am
Cycling – Ellesse Andrews, Rebecca Petch, Shaane Fulton; team sprint qualifying, 3am, first round 4.55am, finals 5.50-6am