Tristan Carter

Becoming a regular on the senior national team in 2017, Tristan competed at all five World Cup events that year and made his senior World Championships debut.

Tristan relocated from his home in Melbourne to Penrith in a bid to represent Australia at an Olympic Games and narrowly missed out on a place at Tokyo.

So there was plenty of emotion when he snared a quota spot for Paris with a C1 win at the Australian Open in Penrith in February 2024.

Tristan was nervous going into the race after a disappointing result in a major regatta the week before, where he rolled his canoe.

“Yeah, I cried, a lot,” he said. “I can be prone to emotion. But this is literally a childhood dream. something you work on for years.

“That was 101 seconds of four years of work. That takes a lot of emotion. But I do feel better for crying. I am an emotional person and I have put everything into this.

“It was a really stressful week and when I got to the start I was just shaking so much. But it worked out.’’

Tristan sees his journey to the Paris Games as a constant learning experience.

“I’m proud to say that I’ve represented Australia on nine or 10 occasions now ... so it’s been a good journey, it’s been plentiful of experience and it’s really just constant learning,” he says. “Every opportunity has been a learning one for me, nothing is ever the same and I take solace in the fact I am constantly developing and constantly growing.

“I’m more happy at the moment with the progression and maturity and learning that I’ve physically noticed in myself, which makes me proud as an athlete.”

In Paris Tristan advanced out of the men's C1 heats as the eighth-fastest paddler, and in the men's C1 final finished ninth. While in the Olympic debut of men's kayak cross he was eliminated in the quarter-finals.