No cash, no sponsor, no hope? Joe Clarke’s journey from despair to Olympic double gold favourite

“You don’t want to put limitations on what is possible but it’s still pretty hard to say I’m going to win two gold medals at the Olympics,” says Joe Clarke with the grounded optimism that defines him. Clarke is already an Olympic champion, having been an unlikely winner of the canoe slalom in Rio in 2016, and last September he won two gold medals at the world championships .

Related: ‘It might actually be cool’: wary Parisians seduced by prospect of Olympics

On his home course at Lee Valley, Clarke dominated the canoe slalom and kayak cross at the worlds with an audacious display of courage and skill that means he has realistic expectations of repeating the double at the Paris Olympics.

“It’s quite big to come out and say those kinds of things because people will be quick to jump on it if it doesn’t happen,” Clarke says at the Lee Valley White Water Centre. “It’s such a big ask and I’ve probably still not comprehended how hard it is. But winning both at the worlds really switched my mindset and made me think: ‘It’s possible in Paris.’

“When we started the Olympic cycle a couple of years ago after my new coach, Campbell Walsh, came in, we set the Paris project and that was to win two medals, one being gold. But after the worlds I said: ‘We’ve just proved it’s possible to win two golds.’”

The 31-year-old grins. “That’s quite exciting,” he says, with deliberate understatement.

Clarke’s ambition is bolstered by the resilience he showed when missing out on selection for the Tokyo Olympics even though he was the defending champion. But it’s obvious the scars remain as he breaks down a selection process that also ignored his world ranking. Clarke was undermined by a shoulder injury, which required surgery that he deferred, and so the battle to be picked was decided at the 2019 world championships.

Bradley Forbes-Cryans finished fourth and Clarke was fifth. The result meant that, in the race for selection, they were both on 30 points and the rules stipulated that, in a tie, the highest finisher at the worlds would go to the Olympics. “It was highlighted that you could beat someone 11 out of 12 runs and then get pipped at the world championships and lose out on selection,” Clarke says.

“People looked at it and said: ‘That will never happen.’ But Bradley won some extra bonus points which meant we were both on 30 at the end. Bradley was ranked 18 in the world, and I was at No 1, so it was a huge knock when he got chosen.”

The Tokyo Olympics were pushed back to 2021, owing to the pandemic, but Clarke’s efforts to call for a new team selection were resisted. Clarke and his girlfriend, Annabel – now his wife – faced a financial crisis that pushed him close to retiring from the sport.

“We sat in a cafe in Barcelona after the selection in September 2019,” Clarke says. “Bel opened her business account and she was like: ‘Something has got to change because I’m really struggling to earn enough. You’ve just hit rock bottom with your career. So where do we go from here?’ It wasn’t a question to be answered there and then, but we knew we really had to come together to get through it.”

Annabel had left her thriving beauticians business in Staffordshire, where she and Clarke grew up, and joined him down south near Lee Valley. Her struggle to build a new business was made even harder by Covid while Clarke languished in the Olympic wilderness. The canoeist was plagued with guilt and, as he says now, “I felt terrible. I was like: ‘You’ve made all these sacrifices and the whole point of it was to get me to the Olympics. I’ve not delivered and look where you are.’

“She told me I was being silly and I couldn’t control any of these things. But it weighs heavy that somebody has given so much for you and you feel you’ve let them down.”

Clarke was “absolutely gutted” and he says: “I just wanted to stop right there and then.” So he was close to walking away from canoeing? “100%. I said I’ll get this shoulder surgery, which I had a couple of weeks later, and we’ll see after rehab.”

For Clarke, “it was a big hit because I’d just taken a mortgage on a flat down here and Bel had been earning good money at home. She’d put all her eggs in a basket which said: ‘Let’s go to the Olympics and do it together.’

“After Covid she couldn’t do anything as a beautician because of the ban on close-contact work. The support was getting less and less from the government and so that was the hardest period. The saving grace was you couldn’t leave the house so you didn’t really need much money. We were also fortunate to be so close to both our families and we could rely on them for a little support if necessary.”

Clarke still received funding from British Canoeing but “I also lost Red Bull as a sponsor. They dropped me. It was a nice little bit of money that helped to plump up Bel’s salary but, after I missed the Olympics, they said: ‘Unfortunately we won’t be carrying on with you.’ That was a big blow.”

He smiles when I say that, if he wins double Olympic gold, they will rue their decision. “It’s their loss to be honest. They covered me until the end of 2020 ... The following year I won the worlds in kayak cross and I’m now a three-time world champion and European champion. Kayak cross is an extreme event so it’s made for Red Bull. But they’ve lost out.”

The introduction of kayak cross to Olympic competition has helped rejuvenate Clarke since the disappointment of Tokyo. In this brutal event, four boats are dumped from the top of a ramp, more than 2m above the water, and plunged into the foaming torrents where pretty much anything goes. Rival canoeists are allowed to bash into one other with their paddles and boats as they negotiate the heavy buoys before going through an Eskimo roll underwater and then flying across the rapids towards the finish line.

Clarke is a tough competitor so does he hold a mental edge over others when waiting to be dropped into the water? “I think so. When I sit up on the ramp, I’ve got my world titles, a European title and I’m world No 1. If my rivals have a choice of attacking me or someone else they’ll usually go for the other guy. In a 50-50 situation at the Olympics they may choose to avoid me. That will only benefit me.”

He is ranked fourth in the world in canoe slalom but holds an Olympic title in the event. Was he surprised to win gold in 2016 when 23 years old? “Definitely. I knew I was capable of doing well but the whole Olympic experience was like nothing else. We’re a small sport and as soon as we arrived it was magical. We were the first athletes from Team GB to check into these amazing apartment blocks and you go into the food hall and see some of your heroes.

Related: Plastic-bottle seats and wooden pools: can Paris deliver the leanest, greenest Olympics yet?

“Incredibly, Usain Bolt sat opposite me. I tried to make a little conversation but he had his hood up and he was trying to go about his own business. Within a couple of minutes, people clocked who was under the hood and he couldn’t have his dinner because everyone was asking: ‘Can I have a selfie?’ I felt sorry for him but that whole experience was so new to me.”

Clarke went out and won gold and a refreshed memory of that unforgettable day has given him new and amusing impetus for Paris. “I went to see one of my sponsors in Staffordshire and they showed me a clip of my winning run and being up on the podium. It’s the first time I’ve seen the podium footage in ages and it brought back some really good emotions.

“It was also funny because we were the last athletes to get kitted out. I was given size 13 podium shoes and I’m a size 8 or 9. They said: ‘When you get to Rio we’ll change them.’ But when I asked them in Rio they said: ‘Sorry, we’ve only got bigger than 13.’

“I was an outside medal chance so I didn’t stress about it. Then I won gold and, walking to the podium, it was like I had flippers on. I was thinking: ‘Don’t trip over the front of the podium because you’ll go down in history for falling flat on your face.’”

Clarke confirms that, as he aims to win two medals in Paris, hopefully gold, he has the right size podium shoes. He laughs when I say that, watched by his wife, their little boy, Hugo, and his parents, he can dance to the podium to collect his medals.

“I’ll be walking up with the biggest smile on my face. I’ll be so happy to have come back from so much to win that medal, obviously, but I will also have those size 13 flippers in my head.”