DAVID Florence felt his paddle scrape across metal and was surprised to discover he had inadvertently located the sunroof of an abandoned car. This isn’t another cautionary tale about the contaminated waters of Rio. This was during a practice session on the Union Canal in Edinburgh.

The 33-year-old, twice an Olympic silver medallist in the canoe slalom, begins his bid for a remarkable double in Brazil today.

He will do so in waters which are pristine compared to the raw sewage and associated flotsam and jetsam which Team GB’s sailors will find in Guanabara Bay.

“We trained on the Union Canal in central Edinburgh,” Florence recalled of an early training venue that was light years away from his current state-of-the art base at the Lee Valley White Water Centre in London. “It was a nice little canoe club but it was fairly quiet. There was one day when it was a bit shallow and we realised it was actually a car sunroof [we had hit].

“A car had been driven into the canal. Thankfully it wasn’t a body.

“Occasionally a fisherman would tell us to go away. There was a bridge that went over to the National Gallery of Modern Art and we hung some poles off that to paddle around. Occasionally you got some people interested in what you were up to.

“Where we originally paddled on the canal has all been done up and is now plush apartments and restaurants. Our canoe club has been moved down the canal. I’d love to get back more to Edinburgh other than at Christmas. I’d like to move back there one day but it depends how life goes.”

Born in Aberdeenshire, but brought up in the same Auld Reekie neighbourhood as Sir Chris Hoy, Florence could well be destined to become one of the stories of this year’s Games.

A singular talent who applied for Tim Peake’s gig on the European space station, and picks up languages such as Mandarin and Russian when due to compete in foreign countries, Florence is backing himself to return home with two gold medals to add to his collection.

No man has achieved the C1 and C2 double at the Olympics, but Florence has a silver medal in each discipline and in 2013 became the first man since Charles Dussuet 60 years earlier to do so at the same World Championships.

While Florence will also renew his silver medal-winning partnership with Richard Hounslow in the two-man C2 event, today sees him enter the preliminary phase of the C1 discipline, in which he won the pre-Games test event.

Florence said: “That doesn’t necessarily correlate to getting a good result at the Games, but it was very good to do it. Sometimes Olympic test events can be misleading, with not many of the athletes there. It was the first time any of us had actually managed to paddle the course and by and large anyone who is serious contender for medals was there.”

Mark Delaney, Florence’sindividual coach, pointed out just how difficult a task the Scot has set himself. He said: “He came back

from Beijing with one silver, but not being seen as a big Olympian because he hadn’t won more than one medal, so he went down the route of doubling in C1 and C2.

“Everyone said it was a crazy idea. No-one had done it before. But in 2013, he won two golds at the worlds. When you think about it, he’s only training in one class 50 per cent of the time and 50 in the other, trying to beat athletes who are spending 100 per cent of their time in one class. It’s high risk but that’s a challenge he’s willing to take on.”

Unusually for such an elite athlete, Florence does no strength and conditioning work. “I haven’t done any of that since the Beijing Olympics,” he said. “I spend all my time out on the white water channel. Quite often in the winter I wish I could be in the gym rather

than on the water. But in my opinion there’s more to be gained from that and from using your time and energy there.”