Giles Scott: Rio 2016 hopeful on when sailing gets ugly

Giles Scott, the great hope of British sailing ahead of the Rio Olympics, tells Matt Majendie how he can pick up the mantle of his rival Ben Ainslie

Giles Scott has been named 'Britain’s best medal hope' at Rio 2016 by Sir Ben Ainslie

Every time Giles Scott looks out of the window from his parents’ new house or takes the waters of Portland and Weymouth, it acts as a perpetual motivating factor for the Rio Olympics.

The British sailor has been earmarked as “Britain’s best medal hope across all of our sports” in Rio de Janeiro by none other than Sir Ben Ainslie, Scott’s former rival and effectively his boss in Scott’s other role in bidding to win the America’s Cup next year.

It was Ainslie that denied Scott the one British place in the Olympic regatta in the finn class and while having to sit - mentally painfully at times - with the wider public watching London 2012 unfurl, four years on he sees it as a blessing.

“I’m positive I wouldn’t get as good as I am if I hadn’t gone through that,” he says. “I might have an Olympic medal but I wouldn’t be as good a sailor.”

Scott laughs in its retelling at the irony of his parents relocating from Scotland to a Portland home that overlooks those particular Olympic waters.

“Every time I go to visit them, it’s there,” he says. “But it’s not like it keeps me up at night. It was hard at the time of the Games. I’d have been challenging for a gold or certainly been capable of it.

“I took the view that I could have run away at the time of the Games but I chose to watch it, and it was hard. It was like a constant reminder. It wasn’t easy but I tried to take as much from it as I could.”

Since that point, few if any sailors - British or globally - have got close to Scott with any regularity, the 28-year-old dominating his class from then and in the long lead-up to Rio.

Scott was undeniably good enough to oust Ainslie from an Olympic spot in 2012 and deny that fairytale fourth gold but argues he was just six months too late in his own preparations to achieve the feat.

He and Ainslie are close, the latter having signed up his former rival to be part of his crew as Britain bid for a first-ever victory in the America’s Cup but Scott is not ashamed to admit they did not always see eye to eye on the water.

“It never came to hatred but it’d certainly be fair to say we disliked each other quite a lot on the water,” he admits. “We’d have screaming matches on the water and then be sat around the dinner table. It’s odd but we were very good at switching off. We’re probably better having been through all that and, now, it’s not like a traditional boss-employee relationship.”

Scott has now stepped away from the America’s Cup build-up - his last race being victory in Oman last month - with his focus now fully being on the build-up to Rio.

Already, he has spent a remarkable 120 days in the Olympic host city in the lead-up - one assumes more than any other athlete outside of Brazil - and flies back there once more on Friday.

The pressure is on him to live up to that “best bet for gold” tag as well as to continue Britain’s remarkable run of success in the Olympic finn class. Starting with Iain Percy in 2000 and spanning three more Olympiads with Ainslie, GB have won gold every time.

Percy’s success in Sydney is one of Scott’s earliest memories. He recalls poring over “at least a hundred times” a BBC video montage of that year’s sailing regatta in Sydney.

Now 16 years on, he is well aware the expectation is for him to follow suit with gold.

“People who say things like that [being the best bet for gold] are not stupid,” he says. “It comes from my run of wins in the past couple of years. But the truth is that my coach [Matt Howard] and I see it every day. A lot of those victories have been very close, hard fought and the margins are tiny. Even if I win well, there’s tipping point where it could go another way.

“I can accept that as it stands I’m a favourite but there’s a long way to go and a lot to get through.”

Brought up in Canada until the age of seven, Scott’s own sailing journey began when the family relocated to Cambridgeshire.

He was signed up to a beginner’s course and relished the sport immediately with his two brothers - he is the middle of the trio. But there was never any great appetite for competition.

“I didn’t like racing, I just wanted to go fast and racing just got in the way of that,” he recalls.

The Scotts were always a sporting family, in part down to dad John’s role within sport - as a director at UK Sport and head of anti-doping there before having the role of CEO for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

But growing up, the middle of the Scott brothers always had a drive to excel.

“I’ve always had the ambition to be at the leading edge of something,” he says having toyed with a career in the military before going to university and then opting to focus on his sailing career full-time afterwards. “Growing up as a kid I wanted to be the best.”

In the finn class, he has proved to be just that and, although laid back in conversation, there is a determination bubbling just below the surface.

It means he has left no stone unturned between now and Rio, Scott ensuring the waters there are like a second home to him come Games time.

“It’s a tricky place to sail,” he adds. “It’s incredibly variable and the wind’s unpredictable as they get very shifty off Sugar Loaf Mountain and the tides are complex.”

Then there is the small matter of the sewage-infested water he and his fellow British sailors will be competing in: “It’s probably not as bad as you’d think reading about it but it’s still an issue. I’ve not been sick from the water yet but it is a worry.”

There is a confidence that, while he has not completely mastered the Rio waters, he is at home there.

So for Britain’s suppose best-bet for Olympic glory, is it a case of gold or nothing? “I wouldn’t say it’s gold or nothing but gold is what I’m after.”

To follow Giles Scott’s campaign, visit www.volvocarssailing.co.uk