Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a rower weighing 17 stone 3 pounds and standing 6 foot 5 inches tall and

owning a lung capacity of 8.5 liters, possibly the biggest in the world, he is a champion of champions a Hercules of his sport he's won four

gold medals in four successive Olympic Games and in Athens this year the team Britain

defeated in the final acknowledged his unique contribution

to victory.

He was the difference, they said.

He was the one who lifted their entire boat over the line.

He's rode throughout his life at Eton at Oxford where he was president of the boat club but saw Oxford lose by five lengths in that year's boat race and then competitively he partnered Steve Redgrave in gold-winning performances.

Now he stands alone as one of this country's most successful Olympians ever.

I've always wanted to win at things, he says, and rowing engenders and treasures that he is

of course Matthew Pincent a whole introduction Matthew and no mention of those

tears on the podium that we all witnessed. I mean, tell me about them. We liked them.

I mean, we applaud them, not because a big man cried, but because it just revealed the

pressure, really, didn't it, that you'd'd suffered which you've compared to being like a

submarine I mean explain that analogy to me all that week in Athens the submarine that

I felt I was becoming was going deeper and deeper and I was propping up bulges and

struggling with sleep and appetite and even talking to my wife on the phone became a struggle the closer we got to the final.

And then suddenly you cross the line, you cross the finish line, and it's all over.

There's no pressure left, there's no deadline, there's no routine,

and you know you've won, or within a minute or two,

...