Finn Butcher was certainly tracking nicely before the overnight finals in his kayak cross discipline.
"The Butcher", as the commentators are delighting in calling the Central Otago paddler, carved up in his second heat in the frenzied event yesterday at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.
Butcher needed to finish in the top two in the four-man heat to qualify for the finals and that never looked in doubt.
He dropped into the water alongside Benjamin Savsek (Slovenia), Yuuki Tanaka (Japan) and Pedro Goncalves (Brazil).
The Butcher arm strength was quickly noticeable as the Kiwi shot to a two-length lead by the roll zone, when paddlers must tip themselves over.
Then it was one-way traffic as the other three paddlers all struck issues when Butcher just blazed away out front.
Savsek joined him in the quarterfinals.
"Good, yeah, good", was Butcher’s typically direct response when asked by Sky Sport how he felt about the performance.
"Another fast start — that’s the key.
"I looked back before gate five just to make sure. I sort of could see no-one else was close, so that was good for me. I could get out and do my thing."
Butcher was ranked ninth in the world heading into Paris so a medal of any colour in kayak cross’ Olympic debut would be an exceptional achievement.
He was in a quarterfinal alongside Savsek, Giovanni de Gennaro (Italy) and Mateusz Polaczyk (Poland) at 1.52am (NZ time), needing to place in the top two to progress to the semifinals.
From there, another top-two finish was required if the 2021 world championship silver medallist was to make the 3am medal final.
Butcher’s vastly experienced team-mate, Luuka Jones, also won her heat to progress to the women’s quarterfinals.
Jones was second in the early stages but pulled off a couple of slick gate turns to sneak into the lead.
While Butcher’s first Olympic campaign ended this morning, another former Dunstan High School student is just about to get going.
Nicole Shields, a former junior world championship medallist hailing from Clyde, is in the women’s track cycling pursuit team that races in a qualifier tomorrow morning.
Shields, like Butcher, was an ODT Class Act recipient out of Dunstan. She spent three years with the DNA Road Cycling professional team before returning to the New Zealand track squad in Cambridge.
