Luuka Jones is a medal prospect in the brand new Kayak Cross event at the Paris Olympics Photo: AFP / Olivier Morin
It is among a new wave of extreme sports added to the Paris Olympic programme.
But for Luuka Jones, it feels more like returning to her roots - the days she spent knocking about in plastic kayaks on Tauranga's Wairoa River as a kid.
Jones and fellow Kiwi paddler Finn Butcher are expected to feature in the medal mix when Kayak Cross makes its Olympic debut on Sunday morning.
The event, where kayakers in heats of four fight their way down the course, bumping each other out of the way, is part of a shift by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include more youth oriented action sports in the Games.
The additional slalom event was added to the Olympic programme at the expense of one of the canoe sprint races, the K1 200m - an event dominated by Dame Lisa Carrington since she won her first world title in the distance in 2011.
While it has meant Carrington will not get the opportunity to chase a fourth Olympic gold in the distance, the new paddling event still presents strong medal opportunities for New Zealand.
Jones is the reigning world champion in the discipline, sometimes referred to as 'Boatercross', while Butcher won the silver medal at the 2021 world championships, and a bronze at the most recent World Cup in Germany back in June.
"For us Kiwis it kind of brings us back to our roots of just playing around in plastic boats on the river. It's a very kind of extreme sport compared to slalom," says Jones, a surprise silver medallist in the slalom in Rio.
"Slalom you stay in your own lane and it's just you on the course, whereas Kayak X, you're launching off a ramp, there's four of you, you're fighting, you're smashing into [each other] basically.
"Finn and I really love it, and as a country, we do pretty well at it."
Finn Butcher in action during the canoe slalom event. Photo: Iain McGregor / www.photosport.nz
The event is an adrenalin-packed ride from start to finish. Grouped in heats of four, the kayakers plunge off a ramp more than two metres above the water and fight their way down the course. Along the way there are two upstream and two downstream gates for the paddlers to navigate all the while being bunted out of the way by their rivals. The fastest two from each of the heats advance to the next round until the final, where it is all on the line.
"I love the combination of the pure physical force of paddling those 18kg boats down the river, I like the technical aspect of it. There's a specific way of doing the gates that is really fast, but it is a little bit more risky and you have to be quite bold to go for it," says Jones.
"And I just love the tactics of it, you're racing against three other people, you don't know what they are going to do - you have to be anticipating things in the moment and making good decisions. You have to crash into people and jostle them out the way, which suits a stronger paddler like me."
Butcher, left, claimed silver in an Olympic test event at Paris in June. Photo: AFP
After a disappointing result in the canoe slalom at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium earlier this week, Jones says she is fired up for a strong performance in her second event.
Jones, competing in her fifth Olympics, was unable to scale the heights reached in Rio, and had to settle for eighth place after copping two time penalties in her final run.
Butcher was also disappointed with his effort in the slalom. After a promising start to the competition, placing fourth after the heats, the Central Otago paddler failed to make out of the semifinals on Thursday.
The Kayak X starts with round one of women's qualifying at 1:30am on Saturday NZT, before the finals on Tuesday morning.
