Rio 2016: 'That was catastrophic,' admits David Florence, as he blows canoe gold and finishes last

The speed of the course in the bottom third of the 300m made it make-or-break in the final stretch

David Florence admitted his mistakes after finishing last (Getty)

It was not for the want of trying or the lack of 11-hour flights out to Brazil that Tuesday’s leading British medal hope, the canoeist David Florence, ended up performing catastrophically and ending up last in Tuesday’s final.

The British team have been out here five times to practice on the course which is carved out of the Rio de Janeiro hills. It was all for nothing. Florence - who was in form and so confident that he passed up his second run down this course in the heats to preserve his energy - hit trouble in a fast three-gate downstream sequence and never recovered.

Taken with the disastrous semi-final descent which saw him fail to qualify at London four years ago, this was one of the worst days of his career.

Florence turned to professional sport after a career as an astronaut did not materialise and the look on his face on Tuesday night suggested that he would rather have been outside the stratosphere than here. “That’s that,” he said. “Four years of preparation for that and a little mistake. That all makes it seem a little bit of a waste of time. That’s the way it goes.”

These Olympics are only four days old but it is becoming rather a pattern. In the pool, James Guy’s promise failed to materialise. The women rugby sevens’ players lost to a Canadian team they had earlier thumped, to miss out on bronze. Cycling’s Geraint Thomas, equestrianism’s William Fox Pitt and Louis Smith in the gymnasium have all had personal catastrophes.

Florence’s own occurred at gate 8 of this course– the first of a sequence of three, which he entered slightly tightly. In the incredible fine margins of canoe slalom, that made his line difficult to recover for gates 9 and 10. Chasing to make the time up, he hit gate 13, where, pushing upstream, he seemed to find trouble amid the bollards at the back of the obstacle. He also hit the 21st gate.

“It was unrecoverable from the three-gate sequence,” Florence reflected. "I ended up a bit tight on the first of [the] three down-streams. It just made it very, very hard to get the turn back for the next one. I had to paddle back for it. There was a big, big time loss. It had gone pretty catastrophically wrong [there] really. Yeah, big mistake.”

The course ought to have suited Florence, who brought more power here than some of the finalists. The feeling in the British camp was that that quality gave him a better chance of turning around any difficult situations which may come about, especially when paddling against the waves in the bottom half of the course.

The canoeists were being asked to turn full circle and drive directly against the current, down there. The speed of the course in the bottom third of the 300m course made it make-or-break in the final stretch. But by the time he reached the closing stages of the descent, Florence knew it was gone and the look on his face said as much.

He finished in 109 seconds, a mighty 14.83 seconds behind Frenchman Denis Chanut Gargaud, who took gold. Slovak Matey Benuj’s took silver and Japan’s Takuya Haneda bronze. He has not given up hope of competing in this competition in Tokyo four years from now, but having tuned 34 on Monday knows his chances are running out.

Florence’s talk about the regularity of defeat suggested there is psychological work to do.

“You do get a bit used to disappointment in sport,” he said. “You generally don’t win them all. Unfortunately hats a regular part of it when it happens.” Swimmer Adam Peaty said on Monday night that “it matters how much you train your mind. You can’t just train your body and not your mind.”

Florence competes in the C” with Richard Hounslow on Thursday and assured him that he would be prepared, with the silver medal they won together at the London Games providing encouragement. “It’s up to me really,” he said. “I hope he knows that I’ll be there and ready to give a paddle.”

The British team needs him to be. The dashed hopes are becoming an uncomfortable theme.