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October 2004

Everyone kept on telling me how much my life would change if we won an Olympic medal. Personally I never really believed them, I came 4th in Sydney and it was no big deal. Since Athens though my life has been totally different, I don’t know how long it will last but there have been so many different opportunities and random events. One of the most obvious changes is the amount of post I get, I keep getting lots of letters from autograph collectors that are forwarded to me by the RYA it seems to be a big thing in Germany and Scandinavia as that is where most of the letters come from, I am also getting a lot of invitations to schools, clubs, dinners, parties, award ceremonies you name it and I have been asked to it. Both Nick and I have been to visit our local schools and I am also going to try and visit some further away as the benefit the children get is very clear. I went to the Labour Party conference in Brighton to do a presentation on behalf of UK Sport and met Cherie Blair. This unusual experience was closely followed by going to an Olympic ball in the Savoy in London with lots of famous past and present Olympic medallists including Seb Coe, Steve Redgrave and Sally Gunnell.

The highlight day out was probably going on the open bus through London, personally I felt like they had missed the moment a bit, being so long after the games, but a lot of people did turn out and it was great to stand on the stage in Trafalgar Square looking over a crowd of thousands of people. We went straight from there to Buckingham Palace and met the queen, I met her after the last Olympics but this time got to shake her hand. I have to say I do feel sorry for her for the amount of presentations she has to go to and make small talk.

All of these experiences have been great and I could go on about loads more, but there is only so much you can celebrate an achievement until it is time to move on. I am now beginning to look forward, Nick and I are organizing sponsorship and putting together a program for next year, we are both going to try and do some other things away from 470 sailing, to get broader experiences and keep us fresh. Beijing feels too far away to think about but next June we have our European championships in Poland in which we will be defending our title and in August we have our World Championships in San Fransisco, which due to the reliable strong winds is meant to be one of the best sailing venues in the world. We have a Silver and bronze at past World Championships so would really like to complete the collection in San Francisco!