Luuka Jones bowed out of the Tokyo Olympics after missing out on the final of the K1 canoe slalom.
Jones needed to finish in the top 10 in the semi-final to go through to the final, but managed just 130.39s, which included penalty seconds, on her run and that placed her 12th of the 18 semi-finalists.
“I made far too many mistakes and I’m kicking myself,” Jones said. “I touched the last gate and without that I might have scraped into the final.”
The K1 is Jones’ secondary event. In the C1, in which she won a silver medal in Rio in 2016, she finished sixth.
Looking back at her Tokyo experience, the Tauranga 32-year-old said she was disappointed with how things had gone.
“It was a different environment with Covid, but I was in really good condition physically and technically and I felt super strong. I just haven’t been able to put my best performance out there, in either the K1 or the C1,”
Jones, who was competing at her fourth Olympics, obviously hasn’t lost her appetite for the sport. She mentioned she was looking forward to the world championships in September and when asked if she would be competing in the Paris Olympics in 2024, she laughed and said: “Yes, probably!”