Dempsey lands windsurfing silver for Team GB to erase memory of agony in Beijing
By ALAN FRASER
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Four years ago Nick Dempsey blew the chance of any Olympic windsurfing medal on the same day that fiancé Sarah Ayton won a second sailing gold.
On Tuesday at Weymouth, with his now wife watching from a sponsor’s boat, Dempsey kept his nerve to clinch the silver medal and lay most of the ghosts that have been darting around his nightmares in the intervening period.
Family fortunes: Nick Dempsey¿s three-year-old son Tom gets a close look at his dad¿s silver medal, along with five-month-old Oscar
Next stop Rio de Janeiro in 2016, though not before a head-to-head between husband and wife that could make a match race between Big Ben (Ainslie) and the Great Dane (Jonas Hogh-Christensen) seem like an episode of Ready Steady Cook.
Dempsey plans to continue as an Olympian, perhaps in the kite boarding which is due to replace windsurfing. Ayton, who retired in February 2011 to allow her husband to concentrate on his medal quest, could make a comeback.
‘There is a bit of desire burning again,’ said Ayton. ‘If I wake up with that vision of gold I may well get back in a boat.’
The sporting ambition of both is compromised by the presence of their children, Tom, who is three, and five-month-old Oscar.
Britannia rules the waves! Dempsey has added to GB's medal tally on the water
After his father secured silver, Dempsey’s eldest son asked: ‘Have you finished work now, Daddy?’ He has for now.
But the same competitive compulsion which has won him a silver and a bronze from four Olympic Games is leading him towards the road to Rio.
‘It doesn’t fit that well does it?’ Dempsey said at the prospect of both parents embarking on Olympic training regimes. ‘We need to discuss that more.’
Surely, though, in these times of equality with so many British women winning Olympic gold medals, he would now defer to his wife, already a double gold medallist and clearly with the sailing ability to add a third?
‘I’m not sure I would,’ he said after some moments of thought. ‘She is far better at looking after the kids than I am. I don’t fancy being a full-time dad.’
We are sailing: Dempsey just missed out on securing the gold
That attitude is going to horrify some. But Dempsey showed in 2008 that he is a typical self-obsessed sportsman as his own failure prevented him from celebrating his girlfriend’s triumph.
‘You come in and there’s Sarah with a gold medal. At that moment I couldn’t care less,’ Dempsey told Sportsmail. ‘I had to smile through gritted teeth. I was very proud of her, but still it’s not your gold medal.
‘She let me go and concentrate on trying to win and she looked after everything else in life. She has been absolutely amazing. She would have won here. She sacrificed a medal.’
Dempsey had not slept prior to the medal race. But a good start allowed him to control his position. The picture of Dorian van Rijsselberge in front of Dempsey reflected a regatta the Dutchman won decisively and deservedly.
... and there's more to come
Great Britain's Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell are mathematically assured of at least a silver medal in the men's 470 class at London 2012.
The pair have amassed a large enough points margin after today's first race to be sure that the third-placed crew - currently Argentina - cannot catch them.
Patience and Bithell now face a straight fight with Australia's world champions Mat Belcher and Malcolm Page for gold.
There is one more fleet race on Tuesday, before the medal race on Thursday.