Scottish sailor Fynn Sterritt makes Olympics after 'dark few months'

Olympics-bound Fynn Sterritt endured a "dark few months" after the "huge" disappointment of missing out on selection for the previous Games.

The 34-year-old and sailing partner James Peters have been named in the Team GB squad that will take to the water next year in Paris.

The Scot says he thought his dream of competing at an Olympics was over after missing out on Tokyo 2020.

"I thought that was it done," Sterritt tells BBC Scotland.

"I thought that was my Olympic career over and having to move on and get excited and motivated for something else.

"There were some really tough and dark few months actually. I lost my way a little bit for a while, but we needed a break.

"You work so hard for so many years towards a goal and obviously there were times where you doubt it, but there are a lot of times where you think this is really going to happen. And so to get so close to Tokyo, we were world ranked number one at the time and had some really good results that year.

"Dylan [Fletcher] and Stuart [Bithell] were highly deserving of the spot and obviously went on to win the gold, so that was fantastic, but such a big goal, and something you have worked so hard for and to think that you might not get another chance, was really hard."

After a period away from the water, Sterritt and Peters decided to give it one more shot and rekindle a partnership in the 49er class that had been so successful before.

"We separately came to the conclusion that we really had some unfinished business and we wanted to give it another shot," Sterritt explains.

"There was always the worry that maybe the other person wasn't thinking the same and certainly, if James hadn't made that decision, I don't think I would have come back. So it was awesome that he also was on the same wavelength.

"We have a gold medal to defend for Great Britain. We want to bring that back again, we are not going there to be tourists."

Sterritt grew up in a sporting family in Kingussie, a Highlands town famous for its shinty, so it is unsurprising he could often be seen with a caman in his hand during his school days.

"I did [play it] for a while," he says. "I think I had to drop it fairly quickly. It was one of those ones where you are starting to think 'maybe I am going to get injured here, I don't want to get injured for my sailing'."

And his Olympic desire was burning bright at an early age as his entry into the Kingussie High School yearbook proves.

"I found the picture," he explains. "It said, 'Where do you see yourself in five years' time?' - and I said, 'On my way to the Olympics.'

"That was obviously a little bit optimistic, 17 years later - not five years later - and I am at the end of my career, not the beginning of it.

"So it didn't quite happen in the timeframe I initially hoped, but maybe that was slightly optimistic. It's nice to finally get there."

Sterritt has a masters degree in aerospace engineering to fall back on when it is time to bring his sailing career to an end, but he believes his knowledge of all things airborne does help him on the water.

"I feel like it is something I use every day," he adds. "The way of thinking and the engineering principles, aerodynamics is not all that different to hydrodynamics.

"They are pretty much the same, so I like to think I can use it every day in my sailing career to find little edges."