Goodison begins gold quest

ROTHERHAM'S  Paul Goodison admits he is desperate to repeat his Beijing 2008 heroics with a gold medal-winning performance on home waters in front of his parents as he gets his London 2012 campaign underway at Weymouth and Portland today.

Only Goodison’s mum, Cynthia, made it out to China to see the Sheffield-born Laser sailor claim his first Olympic crown with a clinical display in the men’s one-person dinghy class four years ago.

But this time around his dad Roy, as well as several other members of the Goodison clan, will be making the trip from South Yorkshire to Weymouth and Portland in Dorset, where Paul is also based.

Goodison is one of three British sailing team crews bidding to defend their Beijing Olympic titles at London 2012, with Ben Ainslie in the Finn heavyweight dinghy and Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson in the Star keelboat class the others.

Now the 34-year-old can’t wait to start putting four years of toil and meticulous preparation into practice to try to achieve the ultimate goal on home success.

He said: “This campaign really is all about winning in home waters. Mum and Dad came to Athens. Only my Mum made it out to Beijing but they are all going to be in Weymouth shouting for me and I want to do it for them.

“I need to win a gold medal [to be satisfied]. Once you’ve achieved those heights nothing else is satisfactory. It’s going to be a really tough job, there’s going to be a lot of competition but I really feel that I can do it. Without the feeling of me being able to achieve that then I wouldn’t have spent the last four years striving towards that."