Eilidh McIntyre: Olympic sailing champion announces retirement ahead of Paris 2024
Olympic sailing champion Eilidh McIntyre announces her retirement ahead of the Paris 2024 Games after winning gold alongside Hannah Mills in Tokyo; McIntyre had been working with Martin Wrigley after the 470 class' switch to a mixed event following Mills' retirement.
Tuesday 21 February 2023 11:55, UK
Olympic champion Eilidh McIntyre has announced her retirement from sailing 18 months out from the Paris 2024 Games, admitting that a "loss of belief" contributed to the decision to walk away.
McIntyre sailed to gold in the 470 class at Tokyo alongside the most decorated female sailor in Olympic history in Hannah Mills, and had been targeting Paris in the wake of her compatriot's retirement.
But the 28-year-old has instead called time on her career having insisted she would only want to compete if she thought there was a chance of chasing another gold.
"I want to go to another Olympics and I want to challenge for another medal but I only want to go if I'm going to be battling it out for gold," she told the Team GB website.
"I don't want to go and be in that final race of the Olympics absolutely nowhere near to getting a medal. These things happen at the Olympics and you can't control it.
"But I, in my heart, just don't believe that in the time frame available to us that we are going to be in a situation to battle it out for a medal and for a gold. I just lost belief in that cause. I don't want to go to the Games for the t-shirt."
The change to a mixed event on the back of Tokyo means McIntyre had been working with a new partner in Martin Wrigley, the swift turnaround and truncated preparation period in comparison to that which she enjoyed with Mills making for a rocky transition.
McIntyre said there was "no turning back when you've lost belief", admitting that the realisation had made her "super sad".
"I woke up on New Year's Day and I was dreading the year, I wasn't excited, I wasn't buzzing and all I could think was that with one year to go, I should be so excited. It made me really question where we were at and where the team was at," she explained.
"We had a few crisis meetings. In that moment, I was looking for something that I could believe in. I wanted someone to change my mind and make me believe and I didn't, I just went the other way. That probably is more on me than anyone else."
The Brit, a gold medalist at the 2019 470 World Championships, conceded that informing Wrigley of her decision was one of the toughest conversations in her life.
"I knew that because I didn't believe so badly that it was detrimental to our team," she explained. "I couldn't come back from it, no matter how hard I tried. It's the chicken and the egg situation. Is it my lack of belief that is stunting our development? Has it all just spiralled to make it worse?"
McIntyre was made an MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for her services to sailing, the Hayling Island Sailing Club member having also collected silver at the 2017 470 World Championships as well as two bronze and two silver medals in four European Championship outings to go alongside Olympic and World Championship gold since joining the British sailing team aged 15.
