‘It’s the least I can do’: meet Etienne Stott, 2012 Olympics gold medallist turned XR activist

‘When the door closes on the police cell and you’re in there on your own, you start to think,” Etienne Stott says as the London 2012 Olympic gold medallist reflects on the times his environmental activism has resulted in him being arrested and briefly incarcerated. “Each time, while using my platform to communicate, I’ve sat in the cell and thought: ‘What if everyone hates me and thinks what I’ve done is so disgusting they don’t want to talk to me?’ That’s a horrible thing.

“But then you hold the faith and say: ‘You’re doing the right thing. You’ve got to see it through.’ It’s like Olympic training. You go through tough times and being in that cell, and out in the media, is the other half of my work. Thousands of people undertake non-violent direct action and are arrested. These forms of protest are a desperate form of communication to shine a light on the issues, so explaining what and why we’re doing it is important. But it’s frightening because sometimes you’re dealing with hostile people. I don’t seek out hostility. I find it challenging, as is being in a prison cell.”

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Stott, who became an Olympic champion when he and Tim Baillie won the C2 canoe slalom 12 years ago , is an impressively calm yet resolute advocate for non-violent direct action to save the planet. He has been arrested 10 times but has not received any kind of custodial sentence, rather some small fines, for his activism.

We talk before, during and after he spends much of the day at the Restore Nature Now march , which drew about 80,000 people to central London in late June. Rather than being provocative, Stott is friendly and thoughtful while offering illuminating insights into the way the “dark energy” of elite sport bolsters his resilience. When I ask him about the state of our burning and flooded world, Stott resorts to a simple football analogy.

“We’re 10-0 down with five minutes to go,” Stott says. “We’ve got no time left. Positive changes are happening but everything we do now can only minimise the harm. That is really worth fighting for. The harder question is: ‘Am I going to pretend this isn’t happening? Am I going to turn away?’”

Stott is on a roll. “To embark on any epic mission, you have to have some naivety because if you knew how hard and brutal it was going to be, you’d never start. But then, if you knew how amazing it would also end up being, you’d be off like a shot. This is the power of sport and what we are doing now. We set ourselves these beautiful visions and that gives you the energy to start.

“I see many parallels between sport and the struggles that we’re facing now. The proportion of victory in activism and sport is similar. You don’t win very often but you take satisfaction in a job well done and satisfaction from the small wins. You don’t get the chance to race in, and win, a big race every day.”

Stott is one of those rare people who knows what it is like to win an Olympic gold medal. Yet his path to glory was pitted with doubt. He and Baillie were not selected for the 2008 Olympics and he remembers: “We were good enough technically and physically to win a medal at world level but psychologically we crumbled. Competing was too stressful. We had to face the painful reality we needed to go to those darker places we had avoided.”

Their confident rivals, David Florence and Richard Hounslow, were a more typical alpha-male pairing expected to be the best British canoeing hope at London 2012. “They came along just after our 2008 failure,” Stott says. “We realised we had to work on our mental toughness and competing against them exposed us to adversity. It’s uncomfortable because you spend a lot of time getting beaten. They had different values and methods but we shared the same coach – and every day was a challenge.”

Stott laughs. “I went bald because of those guys.”

They also faced the Hochschorner twins, Pavol and Peter, the Slovakian pair who were favoured to win their fourth consecutive Olympic title. “They were the best and everyone thought they’d win,” Stott says. “They were our heroes but we focused on doing our best while being at peace with the idea that we would accept it if we weren’t good enough. That was liberating.”

As the slowest qualifiers, Baillie and Stott were the first to race against the clock in the final. “We weren’t the best on paper but our mindset was strong,” Stott says. “When we crossed the line our coach was jumping up and down and he said: ‘You’re two and a half seconds faster than the semi‑final leaders.’”

By the time those quickest qualifiers, Florence and Hounslow, were set to race, Stott and Baillie were guaranteed silver. That soon turned into gold and Stott smiles: “I remember standing on the podium, a really hot sun on the side of my face, hearing the national anthem. My hairs are standing up now talking about it because we had worked super‑hard and gone through all the ups and downs. It was rare beyond words to be at your peak and win your home Olympics. But I also felt that time was preparation for whatever came next.”

Baillie retired and Stott and his new crewmate, Mark Proctor, missed qualifying for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Stott became a vegetarian the next day and, having been on his first march in 2008, he soon turned to activism . “Towards the end I’d found it more and more difficult,” he says of his sporting career. “We’d raced in Rio, with the canoe course in the middle of the favela, and the heat was extreme. I felt my body melting inside. It was really horrible. We’d trained in Dubai where there is a facade of freedom but it’s very restricted and repressed. Training on a river in the middle of the desert made it stranger and more difficult.”

Stott and his friend Dave Hampton, a former GB rower, started their Champions For Earth movement, which brings sport and environmental concerns together. “That was in 2017,” Stott recalls, “and in late 2018 Extinction Rebellion burst into my world. It offered a formula to reference the science on the one hand, and history and social change on the other. So I was like: ‘This sounds sensible and I should be involved as a minor public figure.’ Any power I have is not for selling Rice Krispies. It’s to do something good for people.

“Extinction Rebellion has always referenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other non-violent protests. I’m not a violent person but I like the way that sport channels the dark energy within us all in a positive way. Huge strides are being made because of Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and the non-violent methods we have used. Just Stop Oil are now charging ahead but it’s incredibly difficult. It took a lot of bravery for me to do what I did but it’s the least I can do when I see this challenge.”

Stott recalls the series of protests Extinction Rebellion staged in 2019 to cause disruption as a way of highlighting the need to tackle the climate and nature emergency. “The first step was the Five Bridges action , which was to test their method of closing London down. I was arrested for the first time. But it was April 2019 when we had our big popping moment and that’s when I first ‘went public’ and got arrested as an Olympic champion.”

Apart from lying in the road to stop traffic, Stott and his partner, Laura Baldwin, a former Olympic sailor, were among a group of XR activists that blockaded Fawley refinery in Hampshire. Stott also glued himself to another protester on top of a Shell oil tanker in Bayswater Road, near Hyde Park, in April 2022. He and four others were cleared of any wrongdoing in court.

While Stott argues that some judges have a vendetta against environmental activists he has, mostly, received fair treatment from the police and the courts. “I’ve only been treated roughly by the police on one occasion and that was during a protest against Amazon, a horrendous company,” he says.

“I was acting as a liaison between the protesters and the police to make it a more controlled environment because nobody likes it when panic or agitation bubbles over. Normally the police don’t arrest the protest liaison. But in this case they grabbed me by the neck and dragged me to the van. A few hours later, in the queue into the custody suite to get booked in, I spoke to the policeman who did it. He said: ‘I feel really bad as you’re a nice guy and I wish I wasn’t having to do this.’ I was like: ‘I wish you didn’t either because we could have carried on peacefully.’”

Stott acknowledges that changes to the law have made protest much riskier. “Now, sitting in the road, or wilful obstruction of the highway – which I was convicted of once – means you can be sent to prison for a year,” he says.

How does this make him feel? Stott, now 45, pauses. “It’s worrying. I have a partner and Laura has a young son and I’m involved in family life. But, if necessary, I am prepared to go to prison. This is a sensible and responsible struggle in a great emergency. With that athlete’s mindset, if prison is required, then maybe it has to be me.”

Stott has little hope that sufficient action will be taken, in regard to environmental issues, under the new Labour government. He also warns: “In the future, young people may feel non-violent action is not enough. They may become violent in their frustration that so little is being done. Their anger may bubble over.”

We catch the tube from Waterloo to Green Park and Stott reiterates that he will never fly again – even though Baillie, his close friend, and three children live in Canada. They remain in touch and Stott thinks a lot of the Baillie kids, and Laura’s son, whenever he is locked up in a cell.

Before the Restore Nature Now march Stott is embraced and high-fived by friends and colleagues. He soon begins his role as an amiable and efficient MC and reminds everyone that 400 organisations are represented and the march will be peaceful. As Stott tells me a week later: “It was a great success. We had many first-time marchers and it was one of the most media-covered marches ever. But I don’t know how many people believe they put any pressure on the government to change its approach. I would still argue that non-violent direct action is an effective way of pushing something invisible into the light.”

As for our uncertain future, Stott says: “I don’t know whether we’re going to win. But I do my best. The most powerful thing I took from my sporting career is belief in human potential and, to me, it’s a force. Nobody knows what a human being is capable of until that moment they become truly committed. Amazing things can happen then. I choose to believe that a great turning, and a great collective change, is still possible.”