Medal guaranteed but ‘the goal has always been Olympic gold’ for Team GB’s windsurfing star

Britain have another medal coming from the water - but Emma Wilson wants better than bronze this time

(Getty Images)

Windsurfer Emma Wilson has guaranteed herself a sailing medal, though what colour and when she gets it remains at the vagaries of the weather.

Sailing is taking place nearly 500 miles south of Paris in Marseille and while the weather is glorious and the seas sparkling, the wind has been virtually non-existent.

And wind is a prerequisite for windsurfing.

Wilson was unable to complete all her opening qualification series races and organisers have made the decision to progress straight to the medal rounds.

It means - with eight wins from 14 races - Wilson will be able to kick back on the quayside watching others scrap it out while she advances straight to the three-person final. But bronze, the medal she won three years ago in Tokyo, is not the colour she came for.

“It’s really cool to be guaranteed a medal, it’s the best we can get in this format so I’m really happy,” said Wilson.

“I just took it race by race and believed in my training that I’ve done all year, for the last three years. Just to perform how I’ve done this week at the Olympics is pretty cool.

“Every condition suits me, so I wasn’t too bothered what we got, I just tried my hardest. I don’t approach the finals differently. I go have food and physio and come back tomorrow like I have all week.”

Wilson insists she has no nagging doubts about going through to the final race as top seed.

At the last two World Championships she dominated her rivals in the opening series but came away with a bronze last year in The Hague and a silver this year in Lanzarote.

“I’m still learning lessons, but the last two worlds were tough to take, having such a good regatta and still not getting that gold,” she said.

“Lanzarote was probably the hardest moment of my career. I felt done with it, I was just so angry and upset because I’d worked so hard and put in so much. It could have gone either way, but I decided to use it to motivate me, after a while feeling every emotion - and just sad - I decided I want to win something even more. The goal has always been Olympic gold.”

Having reached the podium in Tokyo, the Christchurch sailor had to make a mandatory equipment switch two years ago when the RS:X was replaced by iQFOiL - a faster board that appears to fly above the water rather than glide on it.

After months of crashing and injuries, a broken toe, torn hand ligaments and surgery on her arm, she finally cracked it.

“I’m the kind of person that just gives it everything and sometimes it goes a bit wrong,” she said.

“I said I’d give myself three months, see how it’s going and then I ended up doing pretty well so I carried on.”

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