Olympic gold medallist Etienne Stott at an Extinction Rebellion protest (Victoria Jones/PA)
(Picture: PA Archive)Ten times Etienne Stott has been arrested. He has two convictions to his name. Any further wrongdoing in the eyes of the law and he knows prison time is a distinct possibility.
And yet still he will not stop; the cause for which he is fighting too big and well beyond his previous world of paddling for his life down a canoe slalom course in the quest for Olympic gold.
Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of the start of London 2012. To mark it, he will flip open his laptop and begin a call to the west coast of Canada. At the other end of the screen will be the man with whom Stott won the third of Britain’s 29 Olympic gold medals and his best friend, Tim Baillie.
The canoe slalom pair will talk of happier times, for them a career high and for the city of London and the wider nation in a state of rapture in the Games.
It paved the way for three meetings with the Queen, hanging out backstage with the Stone Roses, and Mo Farah being star struck by the pair in a lift in the Olympic Village.
A decade on, their lives have changed irrevocably, Baillie a web developer and father of three, Stott with an infinitely bigger fight on his hands to save the planet with Extinction Rebellion.
He remains under investigation for an incident in April of this year when he climbed on top of a Shell oil tanker calling for an end to fossil fuels, and the protests are not about to end.
“The two convictions were basically for sitting in the road, that’s the tactic that’s got me in trouble,” he says. “The cost of inaction is far worse. We are trying to avoid the collapse of everything. I’m not just going to sit down and watch this unfold on TV.”
As Britain experienced record temperatures above 40°C for the first time at the beginning of last week, Stott was protesting in his home town of Nottingham.
“It’s impossible to imagine how bad this is going to be,” he says. “We got a tiny glimpse on Monday and Tuesday. We live in a more temperate area so those effects have been less strong.
“To me, it was a really strong call to action and justification to redouble my efforts. This is the future, we have to fight for every fraction of a degree. We need something very different to happen otherwise the most horrible things will befall us. We have to make big changes. Another world is possible. It has to be as the world we’re heading towards is too horrible.”
Stott hasn’t always been an environmental activist but has been a keen outdoors type for as long as he can remember from learning to canoe at scouts to that career high a decade previously.
In retirement, which came after the subsequent Olympics in Rio, he planned to do talks in school and coach up-and-coming athletes before his head was turned.
“I quickly realised we were in big trouble and the future the people I’m working with doesn’t exists as we imagine at this point,” he recalls. “It made no sense to continue doing that work. Sport gives you a platform. I’m not Cristiano Ronaldo, mine’s only a three out of 10 – a modest platform - but it still has some gravity. I believe if you have any power and influence, you should use it responsibly. So, non-violence and disobedience seemed the most sensible option.”
There are moments when he feels sad for what he calls “the life I could have had” in coaching, visiting schools and spreading his love for canoeing. But then quickly his zest for tackling the climate crisis takes over.
His platform is all thanks to two runs down Lee Valley White Water Centre, which had been in danger of derailing when he dislocated his shoulder the previous year. Winning the gold on reflection was akin “to living in a film of your life”.
All manner of interviews followed, a party that night and an early start to appear on the BBC at 6.30am, and a myriad of surreal experiences from that moment.
“We moved into the Olympic Village, we pressed the button for the lift, the doors pinged over with Mo Farah just standing there,” he says. “He was like, ‘Hey guys, alright, and knew who we were. He was stoked for us and we were like ‘Mo Farah knows us!”
Backstage with the Stone Roses, the open-top bus across London in front of 1.2million people and a first visit to the Queen to receive MBEs ensued, a time he calls a “whirlwind”.
It is the gold that has enabled him to be more vocal in his current fight, one from which he is not planning to back down.
“It’s a bit like walking past someone on the street having a heart attack,” he says. “I might not know what the best thing is to do but I’d get involved. If people are standing around, I’d urge them to help me. That’s the same situation I find myself in now. It’s a little scary but, like sport, that uncertainty is always going to be there and you need to choose a plan of action and commit to it.”
