Your father was a renowned sailor, did he inspire you?
To be honest my sister and I didn’t really have a choice because it was a recreational family holiday thing. Then when I was about 10 years old I got given a small dinghy and that’s really how it took off. My parents were always really supportive and I’m sure that’s made the biggest difference.

Was there a moment when you were on the water and you thought, ‘this is what I want to do’?
It was a slow process, as a kid I wasn’t thinking about sailing as a profession or a career, I just loved doing it and loved competing. Then when I was 18 I qualified for the 1996 Olympics, so I suppose that was the turning point when I thought I could race seriously as a career.

Were your friends supportive?
Not really, sailing has come a long way in the last 10–15 years, but back then it wasn’t cool. It wasn’t really something that I got much support from them for, though they did give me more respect when I won a World Championship in New Zealand at 15 years old.

You won your first Olympic medal at 19, have you always been competitive in your general life?
Yes, though more so with sailing. I wasn’t a great football player or rugby player – the best I did was make the school cricket team ¬– so because sailing was the one thing I was good at it spurred me on to try and be really successful. I was hugely competitive when I was competing at a young age, probably too much so!

Do you think that competitive streak is something a lot of children lack?
I do, I think it’s a huge responsibility for parents, because if they’re not supportive enough or are too overbearing, it can have a really negative affect on a child’s involvement in sport. It’s a fine balance – they need to still enjoy what they’re doing.  My parents were great, the only thing they ever asked of me was that if they were going to support me then I wouldn’t mess around and would care about what I was doing. For me that was never a question anyway, so it was a pretty good deal. I was never under pressure to get results.

You’ve had to sail tactically in many of your races, most notably at the Sydney Olympics against Robert Scheidt, did that come naturally to you?
I’ve always been quite a tough sailor; when I’m on the water and racing I don’t care about anything else other than winning. There was no question about difficult tactical situations or being really aggressive, to me that was what was needed to win so I didn’t worry about it. I’m not the type to settle for second place.

How has your sailing style changed through your career?
I’m much calmer than I used to be and probably a little more consistent, so I’m better at controlling myself and not making such rash decisions and gambling everything away.

You won your third Olympic Gold medal in Beijing while suffering from mumps, was it pure determination that kept you going?
It was a real shock, it was three days before I was due to race and I woke up in the morning with a swollen face. All my teammates were laughing at me, calling me Alvin out of The Chipmunks! The doctor put me in isolation and I couldn’t do any training for the next couple of days which so frustrating. I was fortunate that the first two or three days of racing was very light wind so physically it wasn’t too bad, and I’d recovered a bit by the final day when there were really strong wind conditions that required a lot of fitness.

Are you looking forward to competing in the home waters at the 2012 Olympics?
Absolutely, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, it really is. Just to race in the Olympics itself is fantastic, but to do that at home is really very special.

What does your Olympic training involve?
At the moment, not a lot because I’m concentrating on The America’s Cup, but I’m still working hard on the fitness side of things and I’ve been doing some design and technical work for the Finn – which is the boat I sail in the Olympics, then I’ll get back into sailing next year. Normally it’ll be an 18-month build-up – a typical training day is to try and do aerobic training in the morning, then work on the boat, and then some training on the water for anywhere between two to five hours, then go to the gym and do a weights session. It’s an intensive sport.

Do you follow a specific diet as well?
I do when I’m sailing a Finn because the size I am now is really too small, I need to be about 10 kilos heavier when I’m racing. It’s not as much fun as everyone would think though, it’s not all cakes and pies but lots of protein shakes, you’re supposed to gain muscle not fat.

What made you decide to race in bigger vessels as well as small boats?
It’s a goal I’ve had since I was a kid – to sail in the America’s Cup and the Olympics because they always seemed like the pinnacle of the sport. Sailing is fantastic because it’s so diverse – there are so many different challenges that involve all different classes of boats. I’ve had a great Olympic career so far, and I’ve been very fortunate with that, but the America’s Cup is something I’ve yet to really grasp and yet to get to the top of, so I’m working hard to get there. 

What do you think of critics that question your decision to do both?
So far I’ve managed to do both successfully – I did the last America’s Cup with Team New Zealand and we won the Challenger Series then narrowly missed out to the Swiss in the final, and then obviously I went on to do well in dinghy sailing in Beijing last year. It is going to be harder at the next Olympics though because there’s more competition for the British place with a few new faces, and I’m not getting any younger. But I still think it’s possible and that’s something I’ve got to weigh up. Either way I’m certainly not in the habit of going out and doing something if I don’t think I can win it.

Sailing can be a dangerous sport, have you ever had any close escapes?
I’ve had a few interesting moments offshore racing, either because of the conditions or something’s gone wrong and the situation has got quite precarious, but it happens and you just have to try and deal with it as best you can. When you’re racing, you push 100 per cent and when you’re inshore that’s fine because if something goes wrong it’s not the end of the world. But with ocean racing it’s about knowing when to back off, because you’re a thousand miles out of sight of land and it’s dangerous if someone gets hurt. It’s about knowing the limits.

I presume you’ve had a few injuries as well?
I’ve actually been really lucky, the worst injury I’ve had was breaking a bone in my ankle when I twisted it, and that was purely from jumping from a big America’s Cup boat into a support boat and rolling over on it, a pretty disappointing story really! I did nearly break my arm when we did a Transatlantic crossing last year with Richard Branson though – I got it caught on one of the sails as we were furling it up, and it was going round and round, getting tighter and tighter. Fortunately the guys on the winches realised and stopped, but that was scary at the time.

Why do you think sailing has less exposure in this country than other sports?
All sports suffer because of the fascination with football, which is understandable; it’s a great sport with a great league in the UK. The profile of sailing has actually come a huge way in the last 10 years, with Olympic successes and people like Ellen MacArthur who have gone out and done fantastic things in offshore racing, and we just have to keep trying to be successful for continued exposure. Sometimes it’s a bit frustrating, for example at the Beijing Olympic Games sailing was actually more successful than cycling in terms of the number of medals available, but all the media concentrated on how amazing cycling was.

How do you think the profile of sailing can be raised in the run up to the London Olympics?
As a team we’re managed by the Royal Yachting Association, which is our sports governing body, and they work really hard to bring in sponsors and to promote the team and work on our profile. But the important thing at the end of the day, as it is for most sports, is getting results. You can sell yourself and tell everyone how great you are but the important thing is to keep winning.

There’s obviously been a lot of criticism about the cost of the games, what are your thoughts on that? Do you think it will be a great thing for the country?
Absolutely, but most importantly it’s really about how Londoners embrace the Games, because they’re going to be a deciding factor as to whether they’re a success or not. I’ve been fortunate to go to four Games now, and for an athlete turning up it’s been about the atmosphere. Certainly Sydney was the best Games that I’ve been to in that respect, and there’s a classic comparison between Sydney and London, both reasonably wealthy cities. Exactly the same happened there – in the years to the build-up everyone was complaining about money, about the fact their parks were being taken over for a venue so they couldn’t walk their dogs there and so on, then about two months before the Olympics started they suddenly realised this amazing event was coming to town and the atmosphere was incredible. Sydney really embraced it, there were so many volunteers, people just wanted to be involved in the games and loved it. If you look back to England in Euro ’96, and the carnival atmosphere we had, if that’s recreated then it could just be so special. Of course it is a huge amount of money, and it’s even more shocking in a global economic crisis, but if it’s managed properly and creates a legacy of facilities for future generations, then it’ll be fantastic.

Last year you were voted Yachtsman of the Year for the third year in a row, did you ever dream of such accolades?
No, those things are fantastic and it’s a real honour to receive awards like that but it’s not something I expect, it’s just a great thing to add on to the back of successes.