PLAYING CATCH-UP

Laser world champion Tom Burton recalls the race of his life, the Rio medal race. It didn’t all go his way, as he tells ROB KOTHE

From beneath his Australian team cap, Tom Burton squinted into the sunlight and cast his eyes over the waters of Guanabara Bay. The date was Tuesday 16 August 2016, with only moments to go before the starting sequence got underway for the Laser medal race at the Rio Olympics.

Second so far in the 46-boat fleet, Burton had had what he calls “a reasonable regatta”, posting six single-digit finishes. Ahead of him was the Croatian sailor Tonči Stipanović, with 57 points. Burton had 67 and behind him was Sam Meech, from New Zealand, on 77.

“So Tonči and I were guaranteed medals,” Burton recalls. “The colour was another matter.

“For me to win gold, if I won the medal race, Tonči needed to be sixth or worse in the 10-boat fleet.

“The chances of that were slim, I thought, perhaps one in 10. I knew that I needed to bury him in the pre-start, but cross the line in contact with the other eight boats.”

Looking back today on the few moments that followed, Burton talks with candour and humour. He admits it was the most important race of his life, even if it turned out to be one of few he didn’t win.

Burton, now 29, known universally as TB, began sailing Sabot dinghies, before trying his hand at the OK and Laser Radial and first representing Australia at the 2007 Laser Radial worlds.

His early sailing hero was Ben Ainslie, whom a 10-year-old Burton watched win Laser gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Burton rose through the ranks at Middle Harbour Yacht Club in his hometown of Sydney before making his move to the Australian Institute of Sport as a teenager.

He won his first Australian Youth Championships in 2008, before taking a seventh place at the Youth Worlds in Aarhus, Denmark, that same year.