21 May 2017

Ryan wins gold in Portugal

6:11 am on 21 May 2017

The New Zealand paddler Caitlin Ryan has won gold in the K1 500 event at the opening Canoe Sport World Cup regatta in Portugal.

Womens K4 crew Aimee Fisher, Jaimee Lovett, Caitlin Ryan and Kayla Imrie in action at the Rio Olympics Games.

Womens K4 crew Aimee Fisher, Jaimee Lovett, Caitlin Ryan and Kayla Imrie in action at the Rio Olympics Games. Photo: PhotoSport

Ryan took advantage of the absence of teammate Lisa Carrington to win her first K1 race at a World Cup level.

She was nearly 2 seconds clear of Slovenia's Spela Janic, with multiple world and Olympic medalist Hungarian

Krisztina Fazekas-Zur third.

"The standard has really stepped up in New Zealand, Lisa has set a really good precedent for us," Ryan said.

"I've recently just changed my training environment, I just wanted to put together all the components I've been working on, and I think it came together nicely."

Olympic champion Carrington is concentrating on the bigger boats at this meet.

Carrington and Aimee Fisher had earlier comfortably qualified for tonight's K2 500m final, smashing their heat to qualify directly, and they'll be joined in the final by Kim Thompson and Rebecca Cole, who were less than a second behind Hungary's Noémi Lucz and Zsófia Szenasi in the other heat.

Carrington and Fisher will also contest the K2 200m heats, alongside Briar McLeely and Kayla Imrie, while there will be much interest in the two New Zealand K4 500m boats who will line up in a straight final with boats from Mexico, Ukraine, Spain, Great Britain, Hungary and Portugal.