Luuka Jones has an old blog floating around on the internet, that she sometimes looks back on as a reminder of all the struggles she went through as a young paddler trying to make it on the world stage.
She laughs at her posts from 2009, an “insane year” when she was competing across Europe – one year after making her Olympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Games.
“We were hitchhiking everywhere – our cars kept breaking down,” she says. “I hitchhiked over the Pyrenees five times!” Hitchhiking meant carrying the bare essentials – a toothbrush, a change of clothes, and a kayak and paddles.
“We stayed with a stranger who was so kind at a training camp in Spain. And he just looked after us, dropped us at the airport and took us over the Pyrenees back to our car.”
The Tauranga-born paddler says those early years travelling to the Northern Hemisphere were all filled with adventure and obstacles, both on and off the water.
“You'd turn up to the airport and you get heart palpitations because you’d need to get your kayaks and all of your luggage on for free - you just couldn't afford to pay excess baggage,” Jones, now 35, says.
She recalls once sleeping at an airport overnight to be there early enough to get the tools of her trade on a plane – then almost missing the flight because her credit card to pay for her overweight baggage kept declining.
The drama didn’t end there. When she got to Germany, she could only afford to rent a car for a day, and when she went back to collect her luggage, she couldn’t find it. Turns out she’d returned to the wrong terminal.
“I'm having a meltdown; I've not slept,” says Jones, who then drove 17 hours to a competition in Bratislava.
“It was just hectic and we'd just do these things and not really think anything of it. But when I reflect on it, it was just building resilience and building all of these skills so that when I did get supported, I was so grateful for it,” she says.
Jones has so many remarkable tales to tell from her career as a high-performance canoe slalom athlete, which spans more than 15 years and five Olympic Games campaigns.
“Every journey is different, but some similarities are that there will always be setbacks and hard times and I think it's about picking yourself up when times get tough and persevering,” she says. “And if you really want something, you can absolutely go and get it.”
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Her paddling story began when she was 10, and her family moved next door to a kayaking adventure park on Tauranga’s Wairoa River. She worked there in exchange for kayaking lessons, and her competitive career began with whitewater kayaking before moving into canoe slalom.
While in her final year at Otumoetai College, Jones was chosen in the New Zealand team to compete at the junior world canoe slalom championships.
“I flew across to the other side of the world thinking ‘You know, I'm the best junior in New Zealand - I'm going to deal some cards out to those Europeans’. And I just got smashed at the junior world championships,” she says.
“I paddled well but I was way off the pace. And flying home I thought if I want to be one of the best paddlers in the world, something has to change.”
So Jones saved up her money and at 19, she moved to Nottingham, England, to train with the British slalom team and take her skills to the next level.
It was, she admits, the scariest thing she’s ever done - moving across the world, away from her family to a place where she “knew one person”.
“But I've heard that saying ‘To be the best you need to be among the best’. And that's kind of been a mantra for me through my career,” she says. Jones improved to the point where she qualified for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
It was a little like diving in the deep end for Jones - the first Kiwi woman to compete in canoe slalom at an Olympics finishing 21st of 21 competitors.
“I came into this environment I'd never been in before and I was kind of wide-eyed and just taking everything in. I was surrounded by these athletes that I just idolised,” she says of that special experience.
“But in terms of where I was at as an athlete, I was such an amateur. And now going into my fifth Olympics, I think I still really value those same aspects of the Games and just the hype and how special it is. But I'm definitely going there with a different mindset and big goals.”
After the 2012 Olympic Games in London, where Jones was 14th in the K1, she received support from High Performance Sport New Zealand for the first time. It meant she had a full-time coach and a team of people around her, all working together towards the next Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“I remember setting the goal of wanting to be on the podium at those Olympic Games, and it just felt like such a lofty goal and I had so far to go,” Jones says. “But I believed in myself, and my team believed in me. To sit on that start-line and to feel so confident and so calm in such a high-pressure situation and then to deliver such a great run when it counted, it was incredible.”
Jones took the paddling world by storm when she won silver at those Games. She’d qualified seventh for the K1 final, then produced a searing run down the 24-gate course to finish in 101.28s, and claim New Zealand’s first Olympic medal in canoe slalom.
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After finishing sixth in the K1 and 13th in the C1 at the 2020 Tokyo Games, Jones felt she had unfinished business. So she’s jumped kayak – to the extreme slalom, aka kayak cross event – aiming for her fifth (and likely final) Olympic Games in Paris 2024.
“While extreme slalom was introduced quite a few years ago and we've been training and getting our heads around it, it's a new event for Paris,” Jones says.
“And I'm really excited. It suits some of my strengths and it's very different to classic slalom.”
Jones describes it as four paddlers in 18kg plastic boats launching off a ramp and racing head-to-head to the bottom of the course. Athletes are required to perform one Eskimo roll during the race, and it’s acceptable for competitors to crash into each other as they jostle for position.
“It's crazy. It's like a demolition derby,” Jones laughs.
And she’s good at it. Jones won the last women's kayak cross World Cup event – and her first-ever World Cup title - at the Paris Canoe Slalom World Cup regatta in October, which doubled as an Olympic test. A powerful athlete, Jones’ physicality is suited to the kayak cross, and her recent success has motivated her to put more time into the sport.
“I just want to turn up to Paris leaving no stone unturned,” she says. “I've got an amazing support team around me and I'm in a really good position.” She’s had to overcome some health setbacks after Covid-related illness kept her off the water for most of 2022.
“It’s made me really grateful for my health and being back on the water,” she says. “I'm feeling strong. I'm building back to where I was and I'm hopefully going to improve past that. I just want to really enjoy that last experience of the Games.”
Jones is driven to “smash weights in the gym” and make every training session count, by her love of the sport.
“I love being out on the water, every day is different. We're problem-solving. We have to be strong, we have to be powerful, but you also have to think a lot about what you're trying to do on the water. So I love that challenge,” she says.
“I love the people in the community. And I just love trying to be the best I can be.”
If you’d asked the kid working at the adventure park if she would one day compete at five Olympics, Jones would have shaken her head in disbelief.
“When I moved across to Nottingham, I never believed that it was the beginning of something huge and I just pinch myself really that I've been lucky enough to have the career that I have had. But there are still some big goals yet to achieve.”