David Florence up Deep Creek in defence of world titles

Having won both canoe singles and, 24 hours later, doubles with England's Richard Hounslow in Prague last year, the 32-year-old knows there are a host of paddlers planning to plunder his titles. But with two Olympic silver medals to his name as well as his world titles he is accustomed to pressure.

"There is pressure on you as soon as you make your first World Cup final," he says. "You feel you have to do it again to prove that it wasn't just a one-off; that you are actually worthy of it. Then again, when you get your first medal and couple of medals, then when you are ranked in the world top 10. So there is always expectation when you race. But it doesn't really affect what you do, or it doesn't if you don't let it.

"I work hard to focus on what I can do on race days. I have worked with a sports psychologist for a long time but I only see him a handful of times a year. He helped me a lot initially but that wasn't so much dealing with pressure, or maybe it was to some degree. I don't spend a lot of time with him because I'm pretty practised - how to do a lot of the skills I need to perform under pressure and it's a case of keep remembering the right things."

Florence recently confirmed he intends going for gold in both C1 and C2 in Rio in two years' time, having won Olympic silver in singles in Beijing and the same metal in the doubles in London two years ago. "That's the aim but just getting there is going to be really ­difficult," he said. "Things are going well. I focus on one race at a time and train hard to the best of my ability. To get to Rio in both would be the dream."

The challenge of seeking to defend both world titles cannot be over-estimated but he has enjoyed his most successful World Cup season this year (second in the overall C1 rankings) and he spent two weeks training at Deep Creek earlier this summer. Some of his rivals even trained there last year to get a feel for the set-up and some have been at the venue for the past two or three weeks to sharpen their preparations.

Florence is confident his approach - he scouted the venue and then had a solid block of training at the Olympic course at Lee Valley - could not have been better, but so much depends on who can pull it off on the day.

"It's really crucial to get it right and not end up exhausting yourself at the end of the season," he says. "It's a case of training really hard and easing off, then training really hard all the time to make sure you actually see the benefits from your training.

"Now is the time of the year where it's just been training. I had a really good couple of hard weeks and then it was into easing down gradually, increasing the intensity and lowering the amount, then freshening up for the race."

Florence reckons that the Slovaks - Alexander Slafkovsky, Matej Benus and Michal Martikan - are all major threats. The Americans are not based at Deep Creek but have had greater access to the facilities and are keen to produce a home winner as they stage the cham­pionships for only the second time.

"The Slovaks are undoubtedly very strong," Florence says, "but it's a very tight field at the minute in C1 and C2. Denis Gargaud-Chanut [France] hadn't really figured for a long time since winning the World Championships in 2011, but then he won the World Cup final in Augsburg this year with a great run. The German, Sideris Tasiadis, has been a very good but not quite done anything yet this year. However, I still think he has every chance of being right up there.

"It's easy to miss people out because there are a lot of guys who could get it right on the day and could win the race, not just medal."

Florence is one of three Scots in action this week - former European champion Fiona Pennie goes in the women's kayak singles and Kinross teenager Eilidh Gibson in the canoe singles.