Four-time Olympic champion Matthew Pinsent gives us his pick of his favourite Olympic memories.
Ahead of London 2012 we asked a range of personalities to let us know what the Olympics means to them. Four-time Olympic champion Matthew Pinsent tells us about his best memories from the Games...
What are your favourite Olympics memories?
I can't really choose between my own four titles, they're all pretty special, four wins and four gold medals are all pretty good. As a spectator I watched Sally Gunnell win the 400 hurdles in Barcelona and that was fantastic, I watched Michael Johnson win the 200 in Atlanta so I've been lucky and made the most of my Olympic time.
Who would you class as the greatest Olympian of all time?
I personally would go for a Hungarian fencer called Aladar Gerevich, he won seven consecutive gold medals, which is pretty impressive, especially as he started before the second World War and finished after the second World War, so there were eight years in the middle and he still won seven consecutively.
What events are you looking forward to the most at London 2012?
Obviously the rowing, I feel we're strong in the rowing and then hopefully there'll be other things that I'll be able to see like modern pentathlon, which is brilliant, boxing, taekwondo, judo. I want to see the flat-water kayaking as well. Lots of the so-called little sports in which I think we're going to do well in.
What legacy would you like to see left for rowing from the Games?
I think rowing is going through an amazing stretch in the UK, we're basically growing as quick as we can grow, if you talk to all the clubs their junior sections are going strong, so I'm not necessarily looking for more people because we're doing great on that front as it is. What I'd love to think is that we get another generation of people coming up and ready for the 2020, 2024 Olympics who watched 2012 and that motivated them to start and pursue the sport to that extent. That to me would make a big legacy difference from London. Rowing is good at that though, we're a relatively small sport but we put a lot of people on the podium.
How do you think Team GB will fare?
I think as a team we've got a good chance of doing better than we did in Beijing. That's not guaranteed of course because it's really difficult to predict across all the sports what we're going to win. But I think with a home Games and really strong team we've got we can do better than we did in Beijing in terms of gold medals, I don't think we'll climb up the medal table, I think fourth is the best we can expect, but I think that in our team there's so many people who are coming on strong at the right time.
What new sports would you like to see introduced into the Olympics?
There aren't many outside the Olympic programme which I think are worthy of it, I think squash is the stand out candidate for me at the moment which deserves a place in the Olympic Games but beyond that I can't see many who have got the right sort of feel about them. As long as the best people in that sport are going to the Games that's my only worry. If Tiger Woods goes to Rio and battles it out with Luke Donald and Rory McIlroy for an Olympic gold medal in golf then I think that'll be an amazing event to watch. And certainly the golf fraternity has always said it was something they want to do and will support it - neither the sport or the Olympics are too big not to need each other so as a once in four year celebrating of sport I think it's pretty good.
If you were to enter the Olympics again, which event would you choose and why (you can't pick rowing)?
Golf, I'll take golf! I'd love to be good enough at golf to play at Olympic level so that would be fantastic.
