Double ambitions

Giles Scott’s goal to win the Olympics and America’s Cup in the same year remains on track, despite a blip at the recent Finn Europeans…

- Giles Scott

Followers of performance sailing almost fell off their chairs earlier this autumn when Giles Scott didn’t win a regatta. Having dominated the Finn class for most of the past decade, the 33-year-old returned home to Portsmouth after September’s Finn Europeans in Poland with a rare silver.

“There is room for improvement there,” was Scott’s take on the matter, having had the flight home to reflect. “I am obviously disappointed at not having won the week but I’m not surprised at how competitive the racing was.

“It’s all fuel for next year and looking forward it is a little bit challenging, what with the schedule having been reworked, but we just have to deal with it.”

By this point in the year Scott was hoping to have bagged his second Olympic gold in the Finn, after winning at Rio four years ago, and thought he’d be concentrating full-time on the other thing he’s got going on – with Ben Ainslie and INEOS Team UK, he is aiming to win the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland, New Zealand in March.

The postponement of the Olympics until next summer was tough for all the competitors, but for Scott it means he’ll be going into the Games without anything like the amount of Finn training he would have had normally.

“It is going to be challenging. I’m taking a couple of Finns out to Auckland with the thought that I’ll jump in and do any training as and when we get time.

“Notoriously the final period of an America’s Cup campaign is incredibly intense. You tend to use seven days of every week. We have to be realistic with what training I can get done, while making sure that I can get back into hard training straight away and not be rusty.”