Ecuadorean Kiwi taking on world on water
Think canoeing, and Lisa Carrington and her sprint kayak chums leap to mind.
Collectively winners of Olympic, world championship and World Cup medals, New Zealand have a top-class group of elite women. But now New Zealand also has a presence in the distinctly different C1 class.
You might have seen them and wondered what it was all about. It’s a very European discipline, the athletes balanced on one knee, bracing the other leg forward and paddling on one side of the boat. There’s no rudder so among the challenge is plotting a straight course down the lane.
Ecuadorean Mia Amelia Friend Chung is in the group heading to the opening World Cup in Szeged, Hungary, next week. She is training with the Japanese national team en route to Europe.
Chung’s is a story of optimism, looking for a new life and heading to a country whose sporting prowess on the water she greatly admires.
That’s what drew her to New Zealand. She has paddled since she was 14, growing up in Guayaquil on Ecuador’s coast on the north west of the continent. Now 25, and with a degree in environmental engineering, Chung is based in Cambridge and is part of French coach Frederic Loyer’s national squad. He trains the men, none of whom are at elite level yet, and Chung. Gordon Walker overseas the women’s sprint programme.
“New Zealand have Lisa Carrington and the K4 girls and they are very important in the canoe racing world,” Chung said in her broken but improving English.
“When I was part of the Ecuador team, we always watched the people who were [winning] and you ask why are they there? How do they work?
“I was very curious about it and this is why I decided to move to New Zealand, because they are very good in water sports, sailing, canoeing, rowing.”
Chung is armed with an appealing personality and is clearly smart and ambitious to master the language she started speaking as a child.
She has had to do plenty of training on her own, which ordinarily might not help but she’s found it gives her plenty of time to work on her technique and improve her performances under ex-French international Loyer.
“It’s allowed me to learn more and be aware about what I am doing. It’s always really nice to have a team but for now I try to train with the tools I have. I have good support,” she added, citing Loyer and Canoe Racing New Zealand and High Performance Sport.
At 25, Chung has three events coming up; a special made-forwomen canoe regatta in Hungary on Monday and Tuesday, ahead of the official Cup regatta starting on Friday; and the second World Cup is in Duisburg, Germany, on May 25-27.
Chung hasn’t qualified for the world championships in Portugal in August. She can do that with strong performances in Hungary and Germany, most likely making the nine-person finals will be a requirement.
Getting work hasn’t been easy, with training — two sessions a day — taking priority. She has done some casual work in Cambridge but Chung’s not complaining.
Right now she’s loving the life, loving New Zealand, having got over the cultural shift in her first year since arriving in January last year.
Her training is going well, with plenty of strength and conditioning work, and she’s tracking an upward trajectory.
“When I first moved, the reason was sport, but I thought it is also a good place to develop in my professional career. I would like to do two Olympic cycles. That’s my plan, but sometimes life has other plans for you,” she joked.
Loyer likes what he’s seeing. “It’s fun and there’s a nice momentum we’ve got for Mia,” he said. “She is really prospering. She is Latin, she is emotional, but she always wants to make sure she gets the best out of any training situation.
“We’ve been doing lots of technical work. I can’t tell you if she is going to be a top athlete but the way she works is quite interesting.”
The sort of athlete that coaches relish working with because you can see the improvements week on week. It’s very much a step at a time, starting in Hungary next week.