Ben Ainslie: It's painful to say, but my Olympic odyssey is over - I won't be sailing at Rio 2016
Ben Ainslie: It fills me with both relief and sadness to write these words but I can now officially confirm that I have donned my Team GB tracksuit for the last time.
High water mark: Ben Ainslie celebrates winning gold at his home Olympics Photo: GETTY IMAGES
No more Olympic villages. No more opening or closing ceremonies. After almost 20 years entirely dedicated to the pursuit of gold, taking in five Olympic campaigns, I have decided I will not attempt a sixth at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Those of you who saw me cross the finish line in the Finn medal race in Weymouth and Portland earlier this year may not be overly surprised to hear that. I said a few things in the heat of the moment to the lurking BBC media boat to the effect that the toll on my body was becoming too great. In my defence I was flooded with emotion and exhausted from the toughest week of my entire career.
It was a bit of a Steve ‘if you ever see me anywhere near a boat again, you have my permission to shoot me’ Redgrave moment.
In my mind I certainly hadn’t ruled out another crack at the Olympics. When you have spent your whole life focused so intently on something it is not that easy to let it go.
The reason I waited before making this decision is down to a couple of factors. Firstly, I wanted to see what came out of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) conference in Dublin a few weeks ago. In particular I was interested to know which classes would be on the Olympic programme at Rio. Because of the wear and tear of a lifetime spent sailing, particularly on my back, which was a real issue this summer, it was always going to be an uphill struggle to do the Finn again in Brazil. However, if the Star two-handed dinghy had been reinstated I might just have considered giving that a go. It would not have been easy dislodging Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson, should they have decided to do another campaign, but there might have been a chance.
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