The comeback kid

Two years ago kayaker Luuka Jones could barely walk down the street without wheezing. In July she’ll represent New Zealand in K1 and the extreme new Kayak Cross at the Olympic Games and hope to fulfil a long-held dream.

Words Karl Puschmann | Photos Graeme Murray + SUPPLIED
Styling Nicky Adams | Hair & Makeup Desiree Osterman

When Luuka Jones was 11 years old, she set a goal that one day she would win an Olympic gold medal. In July, the 35-year-old kayaker will
look to fulfil that long-held ambition when she travels to Paris to represent New Zealand in her fifth – yes, fifth – Olympic games.

What makes her young promise so audacious is that back then, she was not a young kayaking prodigy nor was she showing promise of becoming the history-making athlete that she is now. Heck, she wasn’t even kayaking competitively. She’d barely gotten her feet wet, having only learned how to paddle a year earlier.

“I don't know where that goal came from,” she laughs, thinking back to her humble beginnings on the water. “But I do have a strong memory of setting it. I was babysitting for my neighbours. They had Sky TV so I was able to watch Sarah Ulmer win her gold medal at the Olympics. It must have inspired me.” Watching Sarah Ulmer whiz over the line at the 2004 games in Athens sparked something in Luuka. Sarah had just given New Zealand its first-ever gold medal in cycling and set a new world record in the process. Witnessing history being made was life-changing for the young Tauranga local watching along on the TV.

Shortly after she remembers entering the Waimarino Intermediate School kayak challenge on the Wairoa River. The event was a multi-stage race that strung various kayaking disciplines together and challenged participants across a wide range of skills.

She says she felt focussed and completely determined.

“I remember the nerves. The other girls were all really good but I was so motivated to try and win that competition. I remember how good it felt when I did,” she smiles, still looking chuffed at the result. “That feeling of winning never gets old. It's a deep satisfaction that you achieved something.”

It will not surprise you at all to learn that Luuka has a fierce competitive streak. It’s something you need to become a world-class athlete competing in two events at the Olympics – K1 slalom racing and the new Kayak Cross event – with all the discipline and training that is required. She guesses it was inherited. Her nana was a competitive tennis player and basketballer and her mum also plays tennis. Her sisters haven't been involved in high-level sport but their blood still pumps with that same fire.

“We played a lot of competitive board games,” she laughs. “We’d play The Game of Life and all be doing whatever it took to win. I've just always had a competitive streak. I guess what’s driven me is that I found a sport that I absolutely loved. I was going to do anything to try and get better at it.” Then she pauses and says, “It’s just been quite a long road.”

That road started on a farm. Before Luuka hit her teens, her grandparents bought some farmland next to the Wairoa River and then, shortly later, her parents moved the family next door. She started swimming lessons at the nearby Waimarino Water and Adventure Park, which is still running today, and then took up kayaking lessons, working at the park in exchange for the lessons.

“Barbara and Barry, who owned the park, were incredible and really supportive of me,” she says.

She quickly grew to love recreational kayaking. She would go away on kayak camping trips and learned how to paddle the river’s gnarly whitewater. Her skills quickly improved and before too long she was navigating the entire whitewater section right down to below McLaren Falls.

“It was such a buzz,” she enthuses. “You learn skills that you don’t know you’re learning and get that whitewater confidence. But it’s also the joy of being out on the river with everyone. That camaraderie and friendship. Some of the people I met early on in my recreation career are still my friends today.”

In a few short months, the sport of Kayak Cross will make its Olympic debut. After taking first place at last October’s World Cup in France, Luuka is considered a favourite for the event.

This kayak offshoot is best described as a mix of raw physical strength and chess-like tactics that plays out in real-time among swirling rapids.
It is thrilling to watch.

At the start of the race, the kayakers plunge down a steep ramp straight into the frothing waters below. They are frighteningly close to each other and then, suddenly, they’re not as they disappear into a flurry of paddles and shoot along their chosen lines through the whitewater and around the gates that make up the course. From their vantage point at the top of the ramp, the athletes have a split second to see a line that accounts for speed, the churning waters, and take a guess at what their competitors are thinking. Plans can rapidly go out the window. Ramp position, the way the kayak hits the water at the bottom of the ramp, and even a little bit of competitive argy-bargy on the water can sink any Olympic dreams. Kayak Cross is both physically and mentally demanding. And not without its dangers.

“It’s very tactical. Some lines are shorter or faster but people are chasing you or you’re chasing someone and you're having to read the whitewater, navigate the gates, and interpret what other people are doing. You’re under pressure because someone’s going to try and take you out or smash into you. You really need to be aggressive. There’s so much going on. That’s what I love about the event.”

As Luuka explains the physical, aggressive, aspect of Kayak Cross, I can’t help but notice a little glint in her eye. I point this out and she laughs and exclaims, “It’s true!” before elaborating.

“If you’re behind someone, you really do need to come down and smash them out of position.”

We both laugh and then she says, “But it is quite nerve-wracking, sitting up on that ramp,” before explaining what it’s like. 

Luuka competing at the Kayak Cross Nationals in Auckland

(photo Rod Hill). 

“You have your plan, but when you launch in you have no idea what’s going to unfold. You all launch at the same time and you want to be fast down the ramp and people are paddling and there’s so much going on that you have to be quite calm and composed in what is an incredibly chaotic situation. You hope that when you land, you’re going to be out in front, but that doesn’t always happen. You could get a paddle to the face.”

The most extraordinary part of Luuka’s journey to the 2024 Olympic Games, and what will make it ripe for a movie adaptation if she does indeed win the gold medal, is that less than two years ago she was diagnosed with Long Covid. It well and truly knocked her out. Forget about gold medals, she could barely make it to the letterbox without becoming puffed out of breath and needing to rest.

Her illness forced her to completely drop out of the 2022 season, losing the whole year as she rested and recuperated. For the competitive, world-class athlete, it was devastating and led to many dark days and sleepless soul-searching. During that long, hard year Luuka admits that she often thought about quitting and regularly questioned not just her commitment to kayaking but also her love for it.

“It was a hugely challenging experience,” she sighs. “I realised a lot of my happiness was wrapped up in physical activity. It wasn’t that I just couldn’t compete for a year, it was that I couldn’t do anything physical. Going for a walk was a big deal. I couldn’t feel competitive so I wasn’t excited about coming back to race. I was starting to question,

‘Should I even be doing this?’ or ‘Am I ever going to come back after a year out?’ All these thoughts cross your mind.”

It sounds like there may have been some depression seeping in, understandable given the circumstances, and she nods and heavily says, “Yeah, probably a little bit.”

Luuka talks about installing a hyperbaric chamber in her garage and laying in it for a couple of hours each day to get more oxygen to her lungs and help her body fight the infection.

Her recovery routine started out with three training sessions per week. If she had a recovery week, she never really enjoyed it, as she never felt like she'd earned it.

Eventually, after an incredibly difficult year, the fog lifted and Luuka felt able to race. She entered the Nationals, an action she describes as “a big deal” after her year off. She paddled well but disaster struck when she injured her neck. The injury took her out of contention for another couple of weeks. This set a pattern where she’d return only to hurt her knee or stuff up her arm. It seemed like every time she hit the water, she’d land another injury and be confined back to land.

“It wasn’t all just Covid, it was all these little obstacles along the way to getting back into full-time training,” she explains. “But my philosophy is that there’s an opportunity in everything. So I tried to look for the opportunities.”

One was being able to spend the year in New Zealand with her fiancé and her family instead of being off competing in Europe as she usually would be. But the biggest thing, she says, was that the enforced time off ultimately led to rediscovering her love for the sport.

“Before Covid I’d get so caught up in my mistakes. If I had a bad session, I’d take it home with me and be really pissed off for a long time. Now I’m just grateful for being out on the water, feeling those sensations and being able to paddle again. I’m glad I wrote down in my journal what was going on because I can look back and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that was tough.’

“But I’m the sort of person who just charges forward and doesn’t really hold on to those things too much,” she continues. “They make you more resilient, or they teach you something at the time, and then you just have to crack on.”

For someone about to compete in two events against the best athletes in the world at the most prestigious and globally historic sporting competition, Luuka is extremely relaxed. She’s in good spirits and feeling confident.

“I think it’s easy to be relaxed when you’re a few months out from the Games,” she jokes. “But it’s a high-pressure event, for everyone, and we’re all in the same boat, excuse the pun. But I try and put a lot of effort into preparing mentally as well as physically. It’s a big occasion with a lot of pressure and a lot of distractions. When I visualise the Olympics I feel a bit nervous. But I enjoy this time of year because it’s been a three-year build, and it all starts coming to fruition.”

Luuka’s comeback is nearly complete. She’s mentally and physically prepared. She’s going in as a favourite. And, perhaps most of all, she’s excited.

In her astonishing career, she’s set so many kayak slalom records in New Zealand, brought home so many medals, and competed in those four previous Olympic Games that she’s now the athlete that young babysitters around Aotearoa are watching compete on TV.

“I sometimes forget that maybe I am a role model because I still haven’t achieved what I want to achieve, or I’m not at that level yet,” she says, referencing her decades-old goal.

“But when I reflect on my journey I have a lot of things to share, and it’s nice to maybe inspire someone to pick up a paddle or pursue something that they’re passionate about. That would make me really happy to know that I've helped someone to chase their dream.”

Which circles us back to the start. Luuka got Silver at Rio. Will she get Gold in Paris fulfilling the goal she set for herself all those years ago?

“Hopefully, yeah! I mean, that’s the goal,” she laughs. “My fiancé, my family and my friends will all be there watching. It’s a really special occasion to share with them and then to go out there and see what I can do. And it’s so exciting to represent the Bay.”

Then she smiles warmly and says, “Really, I’m just a small-town girl from Tauranga.” 

To the edge of the earth

Olympic kayaker Mike Dawson's spirit of adventure continues to drive him toward epic expeditions, traversing remote landscapes and pushing himself to the limit.

Words Karl Puschmann / Photos Graeme Murray + Supplied
 Hair + Make up Desiree Osterman

Mike Dawson has never been one to shirk from a challenge. Instead, he actively seeks challenge out. You could say it’s a defining characteristic.

The former Olympic kayaker and Antarctic adventurer has also chalked up another win in beating UNO to our interview. When we park up at the Okere Falls Store, he’s already there sitting on the deck, coffee in hand and having quick chats with the people coming and going on this fine Friday morning.

Mike’s lived in the small town of Okere Falls, population under 400, for around 15 years, so greets most of the other regulars arriving for their coffee fix by name.

“I’m based here,” he explains. “When I was racing, we’d train a lot on the river. So it was a natural progression for training to be here full time. It's pretty cool. There's an amazing community, heaps of good running, and the cafe here is great. And we're not even 20 minutes from town,” he says, referencing nearby Rotorua. 

In fact, that’s where he’s been this morning. Out on his mountain bike tearing around the bike trails in the mighty Redwoods. He reckons he’s “close” to having ridden all 200 kilometres of their various tracks. 

Between kayaking, mountain biking and his recent 50-day trek over the snowy grounds of Antarctica, you’d be right in thinking he’s an adventurer.

“Slalom kayaking is not super adventurous. That's a typical Olympic sport,” he says of the sport that he’s most known for. “Whitewater, or what you could call extreme kayaking or running rivers around the world, that's a more adventurous sport.”

Then he chuckles and says, “But my bike is far from adventurous.”

What’s a lot closer to adventure was his recent trip to the edge of the earth and back. After a rigorous application process, Mike was selected to join the Antarctic Heritage Trust’s Inspiring Explorers Expedition which would see him skiing 1000 kilometres over 50 days through the beautifully scenic, but incredibly hostile, environment of Antarctica, trudging all the way to the South Pole. It was an epic adventure in the truest sense of the word.

“It was a pretty interesting mission, like, it's definitely hardcore,” he says with typical understatement and no hint of irony. “It's a massive undertaking. The physical strain you put on your body is unbelievable and the environment there is hostile but stunningly beautiful and peaceful. It's a freezing cold environment, one that doesn’t suit long-term living. There's no food, no water and no trees. There's nothing. It's a real adventure. The frontier.

“If you think about it, you're pretty much doing a half marathon a day, towing a bunch of weight behind you,” he says.

It sounds hellish. Mike says that, for some of the time, it was.

“For me, it was around the 30th day, when I realised I still had 20 days to go. It's crazy. A three-week trip there on its own would be next level, and we'd already been out there for a month. It's tough. There were some days that we were exhausted. I remember two days clearly that I was done. I was like, ‘Man, I don't know if I can keep doing this.’ It's such a long time. But then the coolest thing you learn quickly is if you can just take your next breath, that'll mean you take your next step, and suddenly an hour will be gone. Once that hour’s gone, the day will be gone. So if you can just keep moving, the day goes.”

By taking one step after the other, the small team covered around 20 to 25 kilometres a day, depending on conditions and how everyone was holding up. Some days the conditions would be too bad for them to move far. The next it would be beautiful blue skies and glistening snow and they’d be on their way. 

Dark days, soul searching, sore legs and always just one more step to go. It of course begs the question, why was he doing this monumental task in the first place?

“We were doing it to celebrate 150 years since Roald Amundsen was born,” he says. 

Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of the polar regions and a prominent figure in what we now appropriately call the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The Antarctic Heritage Trust team was following in his adventurous ski steps and consisted of people from Norway and Aotearoa. 

“The Antarctic Heritage Trust is responsible for preserving all the historic huts in Antarctica. They’re trying to inspire exploration. 

And that's me, it’s what I’ve loved for my whole life. I've been lucky and so fortunate to be able to chase this dream of kayaking and racing, but also exploring the world and the rivers of the world… going to these places, and skipping over that line outside of my comfort zone,” he explains. “I think it's really important to share the stories of the early polar explorers. What I did is easy compared to what they did. When I read their stories I wish I was from that time, so I could have sailed to Antarctica and spent three years exploring.” 

It may have been easy in comparison to Amundsen’s legendary explorations but that doesn’t mean there was anything easy about it. It’s still Antarctica. He says he tried to keep his mind focussed on each day, rather than the overwhelming 1000 kilometres of their trek. When asked what he learned about himself during this epic adventure he stops and thinks for a second before answering. 

“It was such a cool reminder of how important it is to slow down and be content with where you are. When you're out there you don't have any communication with anyone. No internet, no constant distraction like you have in the modern world,” he says. 

“That was one of the hardest parts of coming back. The overstimulation of all this noise that comes at you every day, all the time. I’m trying to remember what it felt like to be out there and keep a bit of that calmness in my day-to-day life somehow.”

Then, with an air of resignation, he says, “It's impossible. But I’m trying.

“When you go on a trip like this one to the South Pole, you have heaps of time to think and take stock of what's going on in life. In general life, things are busy. You're always moving and on the go. You never really get time to think about where you want to be in a few years,” he continues. “When you’re an athlete, it's so clear, it’s so easy, right? Because you’re progressing towards the Olympics or the Worlds. That’s a big goal and a big priority. Every day when you wake up. That’s all you do. The coolest thing about Antarctica is that it gave me time to declutter all that, to think about where I could see myself in a few years and what I want to do. That was a massive takeaway for me, figuring that out.”

So the hard times, the adventure, is what made it all worthwhile?

“Yeah, the moment was hard, but when you get to the end of any challenge, it's always worth it. It's really rewarding. When you finish it's sometimes hard to understand the magnitude of the undertaking, because when you're in it, it's just what you're doing. It’s only afterwards when you start telling the story that you realise it was something to be really proud of.”

To find out what shaped Mike’s adventurous spirit, you have to go back to when he was lad. He reckons his sense of adventure was born from exploring our local rivers on his kayak. A pass time which got him hooked on the sport when he was a student at Tauranga Boys College. In this regard, he was following in the wake of his brother, who was already paddling. Mike joined the school’s kayak club, which led him to competing.

He took to the sport like a duck to water and was soon spending all his free time on the river with his mates.

“I enjoyed it a lot,” he smiles. “It's pretty cool. Kayaking definitely took up a lot of time as a kid for sure.”

I suggest that it sounds like a good way to keepout of trouble.

“Yeah, probably,” he says, before grinning and adding, “Or getting into trouble.” 

Mike recalls a few misadventures trying to crack the rivers and the Kaimais with low water – and too much water. 

“I remember my first day going kayaking up the Wairoa River and tipping over and being scared,” he laughs. “I couldn't roll back up. I ran out of breath and had to swim. I got a lot of grief for swimming in the river.”

From tumbling in the Wairoa River to competing at two Olympic Games, first at London in 2012 and then at Rio de Janeiro four years later, is a heck of a ride. He’s modest about how he got there.

“Just paddling heaps,” he says, before talking about slalom kayaking’s own journey as a sport.

“If I look at the progression of the sport, the kids are so much better now than we were when we were young. We had to learn everything. It was slow and took us ages, especially the slalom. Kiwis love adventure and getting out on the river. Slalom is different to that, it’s really precise. For us to progress from this raw vision of kayaking to a refined version was pretty hard. It was a massive journey.”

He says it’s a very Euro-dominated sport and remembers going to the Junior Worlds for the first time and “getting hammered” by the Europeans. Rather than getting discouraged, it had the opposite effect and the team returned home to begin training harder and smarter. Mike set a goal for the following year – he’d make the finals. It was a goal he accomplished.

“I wasn’t very good in the final, I ended up 10th.” Then he grins and says, “But goal achieved all the same.”

Mike’s retired from competing but is still involved as a trainer. Nowadays the sport is different, with strong clubs, education, resources and an Olympic-level course in Auckland for training. 

“We have athletes and teams that are capable of winning any of the events,” he says. “It's just a matter of them doing it when it counts. Whereas back in the day, when we were first becoming senior athletes, just getting in the Top 40 would be huge.”

After 15 years of kayaking at the highest level, his paddle is now permanently hung up to dry, although he remains heavily involved in the sport in a training and coaching capacity. He has a big year ahead with the World Championships in London in September. Doing well there means travelling to Paris for the Olympics. 

With so much going on Mike says he’s trying to keep his Antarctic cool.

“It's hard. You say all these things, like, ‘I'm not going to drive my car as much, I'm not going to use my phone as much’, then you come back, and the reality is you fall back into some of the old habits,” he says. “But it's making sure you change a couple of little things. Those little things will evolve into bigger things. And then that makes monumental change.

“It’s the same in sport,” he continues. “When you try to change one tiny thing it can be the difference between big performance or small. I feel it’s similar in life. I’ve been trying to be a little bit more intentional with what I do each day.”

Then, with a smile, the adventuring Olympian shares the biggest takeaway from his epic adventure. “Make sure you leave time for the things you enjoy. Go for a ride or a kayak and hang out with friends. When you’re away from everything for so long, you realise how much you miss them.”