Home-based training has Kiwi kayaker humming on water

From canned goods and pet chickens during lockdown, Olympic silver medallist times her run to perfection in bid for a Tokyo repeat.

Locked down like the rest of the country, the whitewater off limits, Luuka Jones had to get creative last year.

Already confirmed for her fourth Olympic Games – postponed due to Covid-19 – Jones raided her pantry for canned fruit and put it to good use. Not on her cereal, but as weights in her own workout routine at her Bay of Plenty home, watched by her curious pet chickens who sometimes got too close.

The video made for entertaining TV during those weird couple of months, as beached New Zealand water athletes had time on their hands and re-set their goals in unprecedented times for global sporting events.

For Jones, Olympic canoe slalom silver medallist in Rio 2016, the weirdness didn’t stop until she masked up and finally boarded a plane for Europe in May.

‘‘I’m really excited to be here, but I’m also really relieved to be here. I’ve been thinking about the Olympics every day for the last couple of years so it’s nice to actually get to Japan,’’ she told Radio

NZ from the Athletes Village. That Europe trip for World Cup races in the Czech Republic and Germany was vital to ease Jones’ mind amid offshore international competition, which she hadn’t faced since winning world championship bronze in Spain, and a Tokyo test event at the Games venue in October 2019.

The Vector Wero Whitewater Park in Auckland is her second backyard, and a world-class facility to work on her core and overall strength, but without top competition it was a struggle.

‘‘It was quite uncertain whether we’d be able to go to Europe, there were a lot of boxes to tick and a lot of work to do around risk management,’’ she said. ‘‘Obviously Covid-19 has been at large in Europe for a long time and we had to be really careful, but it was amazing to get over there.’’

Not only that, but she had her coach and biggest supporter alongside. Scotsman Campbell Walsh – an Olympics K1 silver medallist in Athens in 2004 – began coaching Jones in 2013 and, around the time she won her own silver in 2016, they became a couple.

‘‘One of the positives is because we spend so much time together, and Campbell knows me really well, I guess it’s quite seamless, really. We are on the same page and because we know each other so well, things can go unsaid,’’ Jones says.

On that vital buildup sojourn in June, Jones set off in the best shape of her life, and hitting personal bests in the gym. She finished fifth in K1 at the Prague World Cup, 2.41sec off winner Klaudia Zwolinska (Poland), but with 4sec of penalty touches.

In the C1 (single-bladed paddle, in which women are competing for the first time in Tokyo), Jones picked up 6sec of touches in the semifinal to finish 17th and miss the final, though her raw time would’ve qualified her fifth.

A missed gate at the Markkleeberg round in Germany a week later relegated her to 10th in the K1 final but again, her raw time would have had her in the top five. That was enough to satisfy Jones she was on the right

track, as she joins Callum Gilbert as New Zealand’s whitewater contingent in Japan.

Jones is in elite company with discus thrower Beatrice Faumuina, marathon runner Lorraine Moller and table tennis player Li Chunli as four-time New Zealand women Olympians. Dame Valerie Adams is at her fifth in Tokyo, along with windsurfer Barbara Kendall the only women five-timers.

She first splashed into Olympic water in Beijing as a 19-yearold and at her third try in Rio qualified seventh fastest, then stormed into silver behind Maialen Chourraut of Spain, and ahead of Australian Jessica Fox, who again looms as toughest to beat in Tokyo.

At 32, another five years wiser and already with a medal in safe keeping back home, Jones is in the right mindset to make another splash towards the Olympic podium in her K1 heat run at 5.40pm today (NZT).

‘‘In one way it’s nice to already have an Olympic medal, it takes the pressure off somewhat because I’ve already achieved a big goal. In another sense I obviously want to do better and I know that I’m in form to be on the podium, definitely. It comes down to how I execute the race as to what colour [medal] that may be.

‘‘I’ve been doing a lot of psychology work around how I approach the event.’’

Thanks to those canned goods, the chickens, a canny coach and 13 years of Olympic experience, another Jones medal doesn’t seem too far out of reach.