Kayak Singles, 500 metres, Women

At Tokyo 2020, Lisa Carrington had won three kayak gold medals, including singles golds at both 200 and 500 metres. The World Champion at K1-500 in both 2022 and 2023, she had 15 gold medals and 22 medals from the World Championships and came to Paris 2024 as an overwhelming favorite in this event. When the final of this event took place, she had already won gold in Paris in the K2 and K4 events.

Carrington won both her heat and semi-final and the only question seemed to be who would take the lesser medals. Carrington did not disappoint, winning the gold medal in the final by over one second, with a new Olympic best time of 1:47.36. Silver went to Hungary’s Tamara Csipes, with Denmark’s Emma Jørgensen trailing Csipes by more than one second to take bronze. It was the sixth Olympic medal for Csipes, who had golds in 2016 and 2020 in the K4 and a silver in this event in 2020, along with a silver in the K2 and bronze in the K4 in Paris. This was also far from Jørgensen’s first rodeo, giving her a fourth Olympic medal in K1 events and her third consecutive in the K1-500, after silver in 2016 and bronze in 2020.

For Carrington, her three gold medals in Paris matched her performance at Tokyo 2020, when she won gold in both K1 events (200 and 500) and the K2-500. She was the only athlete to win three or more golds at both Tokyo and Paris, in any sport. Overall, she left Paris with nine Olympic medals and eight gold medals in sprint canoe. Her eight gold medals equaled the record for the discipline set by German Birgit Fischer-Schmidt, and her nine medals trailed only Fischer-Schmidt’s 12 Olympic medals.