Retiring sprint paddler Alyce Wood has hailed rival Lisa Carrington as New Zealand's answer to Australian great Jessica Fox after the Kiwi stormed to her eighth Olympic gold medal.
While Fox set records in canoe slalom in Paris last week, Carrington bagged her third title at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, winning every event on offer.
She did the same in Tokyo with her haul eight golds from four Olympics as well as a Rio bronze.
In a red-hot field triple Olympian Wood finished third in the semi-final to narrowly miss the medal race, which 35-year-old Carrington won by 1.08 seconds from Hungarian Tamara Tsipes with Denmark's Emma Jorgensen taking bronze.
Wood said Carrington, who was knighted in 2022, was a "freak" in their sport.
"She came onto the scene at the same time I did, and she's had a very different career," said 31-year-old Wood, whose two-year-old daughter Florence watched her compete in Paris.
"She's an absolute freak of our sport, and I don't think we'll ever see anyone like that ever again.
"She's like the Jess Fox of sprint canoeing, and it's pretty cool to have that in our Oceania region, to have two of the greatest, and she's also just a champion human."
Australia's other paddler on the last day of Paris racing, Tom Green, also missed the K1 1000m medal race and was at the back of the field in the B final.
Backing up from his bronze medal in the men's K2, the 25-year-old Queenslander admitted he had emptied his tank, physically and mentally, hunting gold in that race.
He had also focused his training over the shorter distance alongside Jean van der Westhuyzen as the pair looked to repeat their Olympic triumph from Tokyo.
"To do well in the K1 you really need to focus on it ... I was pretty tired and fatigued after the K2," said Green, who hoped to continue on to Los Angeles and Brisbane in 2032.
"At the end of the day I'm happy with where we're at."
