Giles Scott is one of British sailing\u2019s biggest talents and was a break-out star of the 36th America\u2019s Cup, but can he defend Olympic Gold? Helen Fretter finds outGiles Scott is waiting. Like all of this year\u2019s Olympic cohort, he is in a strange pre-Games limbo. Normally at this point in an Olympic cycle only the most finicky of final details would still be being ironed out, the big picture stuff, like travelling dates and training schedules, having long been bolted into the calendar.
\nThis year everything is different. The sailors might reasonably have expected to be in Japan by early summer, acclimatising to the humidity, analysing weather patterns, tuning out distractions. But when I speak to Scott, he\u2019s home on the south coast of England.
\nThe GBR sailing team won\u2019t fly out to Japan until early July, with training time at Enoshima limited to just a couple of weeks. The news is reporting that Japanese public opinion has swayed against the Games taking place; the idea of competing at \u2018Tokyo 2021\u2019 seems almost as ephemeral as Tokyo 2020.
\nScott, 33, has not spent all year in stand-by mode. While for many of his teammates the postponement left diaries peppered with yawning gaps, question marks where once there was the rigidity of a four-year cycle, Scott faced the opposite problem.
\nRepresenting his country in the two biggest sailing events any inshore sailor could aim for \u2013 the Olympic sailing and the America\u2019s Cup \u2013 within six months of each other created a monumental diary clash.
\nScott was tactician to helmsman Ben Ainslie for INEOS Team UK\u2019s America\u2019s Cup bid. Photo: Chris Weissenborn
\nIn Auckland with INEOS Team UK from October until March, he bounced back into the Finn in time for the Europeans in Vilamoura, Portugal, in April. Despite limited time in the boat, he finished 2nd.
\nA few weeks later Scott was back for the Finn Gold Cup, the class world championships, which he has won four times before (an achievement topped only by his predecessor, and now Cup team boss, Ben Ainslie, who won six). He finished 9th, in a tricky event that saw the fleet held ashore for two days, light winds and a sea state that managed to combine a rolling Atlantic swell with chaotic chop.
\nScott, however, is not into making excuses: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t great. Not the way I wanted to do my last Gold Cup, I have to say. But it was actually an interesting week to race in, real tricky conditions with wind and sea state, and it might actually provide us with some valuable lessons for Tokyo.\u201d
\nThis year\u2019s Gold Cup was won by New Zealander Andy Maloney, also fresh from the America\u2019s Cup. His team mate Josh Junior was 3rd, setting up a battle royal for the single New Zealand Finn Olympic berth.
\nIt\u2019s a scenario Scott will understand well. In 2011, aged just 23, Scott\u2019s name came to the fore when he looked like becoming a serious obstacle to Ainslie\u2019s route to the Games and chances of a record fifth medal.
\nA young Giles Scott competing in the Finn. Photo: Matthew Stockman\/Getty
\nScott won the Finn Europeans and Gold Cup in that year, but Ainslie won the British team trials, and went on to deliver one of the most thrilling medal battles of 2012.
\nIn truth, Scott\u2019s talent had been evident from much earlier on. He and his brothers were introduced to sailing at Grafham Water, bobbing around the reservoir in Optimists on a long shore tether at the age of six.
\nInitially, Scott was unexcited at the prospect of racing. But having grown out of the Optimist and into the Topper, by his early teens Scott had caught the competitive bug, winning the Topper nationals in 2001.
\nHe progressed into the RYA national squad, moving up through the Laser Radial into the Laser, where he won the ISAF Youth Worlds in 2005. At 18 he headed off to Southampton University, putting sailing firmly on the back burner, but still scored a top 10 in the senior Laser World Championship fleet the following year.
\nBy then standing at 6ft 6in, the Finn was the next step. Within two years he was appearing on the podium at Olympic class events. In almost any other scenario he would have been headed straight for London 2012, but Scott had set himself the impossible task of trying to stop the most successful Olympic sailor of all time from going to the Games thanks to the \u2018one nation, one boat\u2019 rules.
\nAfter 2012 he briefly joined Team Korea and then Luna Rossa for the 34th America\u2019s Cup. But with Ainslie retired from Olympic sailing, Scott\u2019s route to the 2016 Games was clear.
\nGiles Scott and his coach Matt Howard planned a \u2018flat out\u2019 campaign for Rio, leaving no stone unturned, no regatta mentally discarded. It was a gruelling but rewarding programme, with Giles Scott going into 2016 as near-undefeated favourite.
\nThings were always going to be very different for 2020. Before Rio, Scott had joined Ainslie\u2019s first British Cup challenge (Land Rover BAR). But after Bermuda in 2017 Scott re-signed with INEOS Team UK in a much more senior managerial role, as well as tactician.
\nScott competing in the Rio Olympic where he won gold. Photo: Richard Langdon
\n\u201cThis cycle was very different to the Rio one,\u201d recalls Giles Scott\u2019s coach Matt Howard. \u201cGoing into Rio he was a full-time Finn sailor who did some America\u2019s Cup tactics, and this time he\u2019s been a full-time America\u2019s Cup sailor who does some Finn sailing.\u201d
\n\u201cHe asked me \u2018What do you think? Have I got a shot?\u2019 and I said you do, but it\u2019s going to be really, really hard.\u201d
\nArticle continues below\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGiles Scott gets his Gold: we take a look at his long road to Rio victory<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe four-year Olympic cycle is arduous for every athlete, but for Giles Scott it has been an especially long road.\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBritish America\u2019s Cup team: Ainslie\u2019s comeback explained<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAfter the first AC75 racing we saw in the America\u2019s Cup cycle, the British team looked to be in trouble\u2026<\/p>\n
As Howard points out, even legends of the sport like Torben Grael and Robert Scheidt, multiple Gold medallists, did not win back-to-back Games. The Finn class may have seen multiple wins by Elvstr\u00f8m and Ainslie, but defending a single Gold is a rare and remarkable feat.
\nAll of which would have been fine, if challenging, had things had gone ahead as scheduled. But once the Tokyo Games were postponed, Scott\u2019s final Olympic training schedule would be compressed to just months.
\nDespite this, Scott never really considered not going for Tokyo: \u201cI think I did, but very, very briefly. Then it quickly shifted into the \u2018Well, this is the new world we live in,\u2019 and you just have to get on with it.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re so used to being able to work out where we\u2019re going, what events we\u2019re going to be doing, almost four years into the future. Whereas that just got torn up and everyone\u2019s had to work off weeks as opposed to years.\u201d
\nNo pause for Giles Scott
\nWhen Giles Scott headed out to Auckland last autumn for the 36th America\u2019s Cup, he optimistically packed two Finn dinghies into the team containers in the hope there might be some practice time in between racing.
\nAs anyone who followed the Cup knows, things didn\u2019t pan out quite as expected for the Brits, with the entire squad putting in a Herculean effort to get their AC75 up to speed. There was no downtime. \u201cWe probably only used the Finns on a couple of days,\u201d recalls Scott.
\nGiles Scott and Ben Ainslie formed a very tight tactician \/ skipper team. Photo: Harry KH
\nAuckland did, however, put Giles Scott\u2019s name back in the headlines. While Luna Rossa\u2019s dual-nationality split-helm set up between Jimmy Spithill and Francesco Bruni initially seemed stilted, the easy patter between Scott as tactician and helmsman Ben Ainslie on the back of Britannia was clear from the outset.
\nThe watching press seized on the dynamic: the one-time fierce rivals now working in perfect partnership.
\nBoth sailors shrugged it off. \u201cI think we are both just finding it hilarious how everyone\u2019s talking up our bromance,\u201d Ben Ainslie commented in a Sky Sports interview with his wife Georgie during the event.
\nIt\u2019s easy to draw parallels between the two sailors \u2013 both are products of the RYA\u2019s enormously successful development programme, and progressed through the same classes. For years they trained as part of the GBR Finn squad, going to the same events, working on the same drills. It\u2019s unsurprising their approach is similar.
\nMultitasking: Scott has juggled Olympic training with America\u2019s Cup tactician duties. Photo: Harry KH\/INEOS Team UK
\nBoth are driven, professional, and naturally inclined to give little away. Although interestingly, both have revealed that they didn\u2019t always feel comfortable among their peers in their youth \u2013 Ainslie has talked about suffering bullying at school, while Scott says that sailing as a teenager gave him a sense of belonging.
\n\u201cIn the squads, I felt as if I fitted in. I wasn\u2019t into the \u2018cool\u2019 things, like football. I found like-minded kids at all these sailing events,\u201d he recalled in an interview for INEOS.
\nWhilst Ainslie has famously allowed the red mist to descend at times, Scott is known for being able to hold his own against Ainslie\u2019s aggression. There is clearly a deep mutual respect between the two.
\n\u201cCertainly when we\u2019re racing, we think very similarly. I think that\u2019s been quite powerful in terms of being able to quickly bridge gaps on the water,\u201d Scott says. \u201cWhen you look back to the last Cup, we didn\u2019t have much time to nail down exactly how we\u2019re going to race the boat. So being able to communicate and have a similar kind of philosophy with the way Ben and I sail together is quite a help. But that being said, we\u2019re not the same people!\u201d
\nAsked how he personally developed over the 36th Cup cycle, and Scott is modestly stumped. \u201cWow, I don\u2019t know, I haven\u2019t really thought about it. Though I certainly felt like my knowledge and understanding is a much higher level now than it was four years ago.\u201d
\nAs a smart, analytical sailor, Scott is clearly a lynchpin member of the INEOS team. \u201cIt\u2019s quite an interesting dynamic, because you have you have these designers that are incredibly academically intelligent. A lot of them are also very good sailors. But the role of the sailors is really to make sure that the information, and the direction the designers are taking, is right and realistic.
\n\u201cYou need a cohesive sailing team, you need a cohesive design team, but you need to be able to merge the two. And you need to speak a common language,\u201d he reflects.
\nUnfinished business
\nAfter INEOS Team UK was eliminated from the America\u2019s Cup many of Scott\u2019s team mates made the most of being in covid-free New Zealand, road tripping around the islands after a gruelling Cup cycle. Not so Scott. \u201cI took five days off and went up to the Coromandel in a truck with a tent on top. That was about it,\u201d he recalls.
\nA hectic training schedule has followed the America\u2019s Cup in early 2021. Photo: Richard Langdon
\nOnce back in the UK, Scott threw himself into a compressed Olympic build-up. \u201cThe biggest challenge with Giles coming back was that he needed to fit 12 months sailing into three months,\u201d explains Howard. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to get the volume in there, the hours on the water, but you have to be very careful that you don\u2019t overdo it and go a bit stale.\u201d
\nThe task is one to which Scott seems temperamentally suited. \u201cHe\u2019s very, very focussed. And by that I mean there\u2019s not much fluff in the programme, he doesn\u2019t really tolerate any kind of wishy-washy bits. It\u2019s all about what\u2019s the biggest bang for your buck and knowing what\u2019s important,\u201d says Howard.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s quite refreshing to be able to do two very intense things and still feel reasonably fresh in both of them because the other is so different,\u201d says Giles Scott. \u201cSo it\u2019s not too Groundhog Day-like. I\u2019ve been sailing Finns for 13 years now, and I think if I was doing nothing but going Finn sailing all the time it wouldn\u2019t be healthy, and it wouldn\u2019t be conducive to a good performance.\u201d
\nIf the Games go ahead \u2013 and Scott is simply assuming that they will \u2013 the Olympics in 2021 will be a strange experience with no crowd buzz, no five-ring razzmatazz.
\nHoward is running through scenarios of how sailors might travel to the venue or rig up in the dinghy park if they are awaiting covid test results. Scott, he expects, won\u2019t be remotely rattled by the whole thing.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think it phases him at all. He seems so workmanlike and clinical about it all, he\u2019s just head down. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if he didn\u2019t even notice until after the event and he\u2019ll go \u2018Right, where\u2019s the party?\u2019\u201d
\nScott is hoping to relieve the moment he won gold at the Olympics in 2016. Photo: Richard Langdon
\nThis will, almost certainly, be the final Olympic Finn event. Scott says even if the Finn did come back for 2024, he wouldn\u2019t be campaigning.
\nNow among the most respected sailors of his generation, he has other ambitions in mind. He has dabbled in some MOD70 offshore racing, and is intrigued by The Ocean Race, while the America\u2019s Cup remains unfinished business.
\nBut, right now, Scott is as singleminded going into this Games as the last. \u201cThe pressure is certainly a little bit more focussed internally. It is very similar to what I felt through Rio when I was the favourite. Then, if you\u2019d asked a reporter who was going to win, they\u2019d probably say me. [But] the pressure I put myself under was way more than anything that any pundit could put on me. And that pressure is still there.
\n\u201cI still want to go to the Games and I want to win. The goal remains the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Giles Scott is one of British sailing\u2019s biggest talents and was a break-out star of the 36th America\u2019s Cup, but can he defend Olympic Gold? Helen Fretter finds outGiles Scott is waiting. Like all of this year\u2019s Olympic cohort, he … <\/p>\n