Finn-tastic! Giles Scott wins sailing gold
Overlooked in 2012, Giles has his day in the sun
WITH Sugarloaf mountain on one side and Flamengo beach on the other, Giles Scott won Britain’s 17th and most luxurious gold medal of Rio 2016.
The sun was blazing as he held the Union Jack behind him after a race that was no less a formality than Trooping the Colour.
For the 29-year-old sailor only needed to turn up at yesterday’s medal race at Guanabara Bay to be guaranteed victory. His exploits over the previous few days, after an unconvincing 17th place in the first race, meant he had known his happy fate for 48 hours.
As it happened, Scott came second in the final ritual, but that is a statistic of no consequence. What matters to him and his country is that he has now extended British victory in the Finn class into a fifth Games. Iain Percy won the first of those gold medals in Sydney 16 years ago and Sir Ben Ainslie added the other three that made him our greatest Olympic sailor.
Ah, Ainslie. How Scott must have resented that man, because four years ago he lost out to him for a near-certain gold. They were the two best Finn maestros in the world and the British team had space for just one of them at London 2012: Ainslie.
The night Ainslie triumphed in Weymouth, Scott was a little unsteady, having watched the racing with a hat pulled over his eyes and fortified by a few drinks. The two men embraced at Lazy Lizard bar, a bitter-sweet moment.
All the glory was Ainslie’s then. But all the angst, all the struggle for recognition, Scott could yesterday put aside as he walked out of his boat on to the sandy beach, where family and friends waved their own Union Flags.
‘It’s been a huge luxury,’ admitted Scott, who finished ahead of Slovenia’s Vasilij Zbogar and USA’s Caleb Paine in silver and bronze places. ‘There’s not many times you can say you have won the Olympic Games before the medal race.
‘We knew coming here that racing wouldn’t be easy. I managed to pull through some consistency. To win in the way I did, I wouldn’t see it any other way.
‘It has made up for London, absolutely. I was pretty disappointed not to be there, but what came on the back of it was a lot of desire.
‘I suppose it gave me the drive to right the wrongs that I felt I had made and put on a good showing in Rio. To be able to do that is great.’
Scott’s triumph was perhaps the most expected in the whole of the British team prior to the Games. His form since London has been impressive — just one defeat in the last three years when a broken boat let him down. But he still had to cope with the pressure of people prematurely putting the medal around his neck.
He also had to live up to the Ainslie tradition.
So he prepared methodically, spending 150 days on the Rio water, which was much cleaned up for the Games but had resembled a sewer for much of his acclimatisation.
‘There has been a bit of an evolution from cycle to cycle,’ said Scott of Britain’s Finn tradition.
‘Information has been passed on. It started with Iain Percy and it went on with Ben from 2004. Matt (Howard, his coach) and I have tried to evolve what has gone before us, not sit on what others did.’
Scott’s route to victory, the opening blip apart, was smooth: winning three of his 10 races, with two second-place finishes and two thirds.
As of last night he had not spoken directly to Ainslie, his boss at the America’s Cup team that is preparing for next year’s 35th staging of a race that Britain has never won. But Ainslie had tweeted his congratulations to the younger man for winning in ‘serious style’.
Scott, who comes from Cambridgeshire but lives in Portland, Dorset, will take a three-week break before reuniting with Ainslie’s project that may yield a victory even more prestigious than Olympic gold. Bermuda, next June, will be the backdrop for that stab at history.
Whether he carries on in Olympic sailing is a question he could not answer last night. But he knows he can never replicate Ainslie’s four golds, the first in the laser.
‘I’ll never create a dynasty like Ben. I’m far too old already,’ said Scott. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own ambitions in sailing. I’d love to be able to bring PA the America’s Cup back to the UK.’
But before that comes a few days enjoying what he called Rio’s good side. The memories of Lazy Lizard will be drowned out.
Another golden day is in store at Marina de Gloria with Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark on the brink of victory in the 470 class.
The British pair, who took silver in London, only need to finish today’s medal race to beat their nearest challengers, Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie of Holland.
The gold medal would put a happy seal on Mills and Clark’s Rio experience, after they were robbed at knifepoint during their preparations here in 2014. ‘I’m retiring after this,’ said Clark, 36. ‘Gold would be the perfect way to go out.’