August 7, 2012, by Harry Waddle

How it feels to win Olympic Gold

Mechanical Engineering graduates Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott became Olympic champions in front a vociferous home crowd after a dominant display in London, instantly becoming household names in the process.

But after 10 years of hard work, the unwanted tag of “GB’s second best crew” and recent injury setbacks, Tim Baillie describes how it feels to be Olympic champions in the latest edition of the pair’s blog.

Wow. Well I’m afraid that I’ve not got very much original to say about the race. We keep getting asked how it feels to be Olympic Gold Medalists and we still haven’t managed to come up with much more than very, very surreal and really quite nice.

This is just a quick update to say thanks very much again for all the messages of support and congratulations we’ve been receiving. Things have been pretty hectic so we haven’t had time to reply to many of them but we’ll get round to it eventually. On top of that the public reaction to what both us and David [Florence] and Richard [Hounslow] have done has been incredible. It’s really nice how many people are excited about the race and the medals. Without the crowd watching the race and the people watching in on the TV it would be just a normal canoeing race so it’s nice to get the chance to thank people and share the medal with them. I think it’s fair to say that we’re both feeling very proud to be British with how well Team GB are doing and also with how well the organisation of the events has been going so thanks and well done to LOCOG and the volunteers.

Well it’s been an absolutely extraordinary experience so far and now we’re doing our best to scavenge some tickets and get around so support Team GB and see some awesome sporting action. This afternoon we’ve managed to get tickets for ping pong which should be good, hopefully it’s not too fast and we can actually spot the ball.

OK, well thanks very much and I’m sure we’ll write some more later, nice one Tim

To hear more from Tim and Etienne, please visit: http://bailliestottc2.co.uk/index.php

Posted in Alumniathletes