PERFECTLY proportioned pecs, splendidly sculpted six-packs, gorgeous glutes – even Lycra-clad lunchboxes have been presented for public scrutiny. We're used to appreciating the rather more, shall we say, prominent muscular qualities of our top-class athletes. But we tend to be less familiar with what goes on inside their heads.
Whether their brains really are in their biceps or we only love them for their bodies is up for debate, but there is no doubt that all that time spent in the gym often leaves little for the library. Which is what sets canoeist David Florence – silver medal winner in Beijing and competitor in the European Championships World Cup Series this weekend –apart from your run of the mill sportsman.
Not only does the canoe-slalom athlete have a degree in mathematical physics, he speaks five languages, including Mandarin and Russian, and has applied to become an astronaut. He even managed to make the grade in Spectrum's list of the country's 50 most eligible men last year (he was number 16, if you're interested). Now, inspired by Chris Hoy's triumph in Beijing, he plans to really push the boat out and become the first ever canoeist to compete in two different disciplines in the same games – the 2012 London Olympics. "The Olympic Games are everything to me," he says. "The other races are a big deal but the Olympics massively supercedes them in terms of importance. Getting silver in Beijing was incredible, I was ecstatic. I never dreamed I could go to the Olympics, let alone win a medal.
"Since coming back, though, seeing the likes of Chris Hoy's achievement, winning more than one Olympic gold, I decided to take up C2, which is another of the disciplines. No one has ever done it before; within the sport it was deemed to be more or less impossible – you couldn't train for more than one discipline because they are very different.
"C2 is still slalom, but in a two-man canoe. My partner Richard Hounslow and I made the final of the European championships – I think I was the first person in history to make the final of a championship event in more than one discipline – so this far it seems to be going very well and I'm very hopeful I can keep that going and win gold in London. Put it this way, I'm not aiming to win a silver."
It has been thanks to National Lottery funding that elite athletes like Florence have been able to continue training, contributing to a total Olympic and Paralympic haul of 437 medals for the country since 1997 (in addition to the £25 million a week donated to good causes).
Born in Aberdeen in 1982, Florence moved to Edinburgh at the age of seven – to live in the same street as the young Hoy ("He's someone I've known about for quite a long time. I have a lot of respect for him and we had the same strength and conditioning coach, though I'd never met him until Beijing,") – and went to Stewart's Melville College. But it wasn't until the age of 14, on a family day out at the beach, that he first set foot in a canoe – despite the fact that his father George had been Scottish champion in the sport. "There were a few little trophies around the house," he recalls, "small things, but there wasn't much and he never really told us about it. I guess we'd never really had a chance to go canoeing before then, and he hadn't done it since he was about 17.
"But that day on the beach, my brother and I had a shot, really enjoyed it, wanted to do some more and joined a canoe club. There we learned to row, decided we wanted to go to a slalom race and it all just took off from there. The fact that both my dad and my uncle had done a lot of canoeing when they were younger was definitely an inspiration."
Florence went to Nottingham University to study mathematical physics and, more importantly, to be close to the National Watersports Centre in the city. "You have to live here to be in with a serious chance of getting anywhere in slalom in Britain," he says. This weekend he competes in the World Cup Series, which takes place over three consecutive weekends in France, Slovakia and Germany. What with training three or four times a day, six days a week, he has little time left to focus on relationships. "It can be difficult," he confesses. "You spend a lot of time away, so you have to have a pretty understanding girlfriend. And I'm very fortunate that I do."
So, he's no longer up for grabs, I'm afraid. But in his Spectrum Eligibles entry, when he was still single and looking forward to spending winter in Australia, he said that in another life he would be an astronaut. He came close to fulfilling that dream last spring, in the run-up to the games in Beijing, when the European Space Agency opened up applications for astronaut training. "I don't suppose it was something that had ever occurred to me would be a real possibility," he says, "but my dad heard about it and I decided I would apply. I figured, you never know.
"It was a fairly normal application form but the things they were looking for were quite specific: it was beneficial, for example, to be a test pilot – which obviously I'm not; it was also beneficial to have a PhD, which I don't have. It was a complete long shot – but then I think it is for everyone who applies. There were more than 10,000 applications, and they announced who the four winners were just the other month."
Unfortunately, he wasn't successful, but he did start learning Russian as part of the process – "That was one of the things they said would be useful." He also picked up quite a bit of Mandarin before going to Beijing – "It's pretty basic, but when you're in China people think it's quite advanced because you can chat away to taxi drivers, staff in the hotel, that kind of thing.
"I've always been interested in languages," he adds. "I'm not fluent in any but I can get by in quite a few."
He's also a bit of a star on the bagpipes, which he took up at the age of 14, despite the fact that he was the tallest boy by far in the school pipe band. "There was me and all these little kids," he says. "But it was just something I'd always wanted to do, so I'm pleased to say that by the time I'd left school I'd managed to learn the pipes."
It seems that once Florence sets his mind to something there's little this Olympic medal-winning, pipe-playing, multi-lingual athlete can't do.
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