Pinsent’s victory set the tone for a historic “super Saturday” in which Britain won four gold medals in eight hours, the biggest one-day haul in the post-war era.
He was followed to the podium by Ben Ainslie who sailed to victory in sailing’s Finn class as the world’s leading dinghy sailor.
Three-day eventer Leslie Law took Britain’s third gold of the day while he was competing in Solihull when an Olympic arbitration panel stripped the German winner of Wednesday’s Olympic event of the medal.
The cyclist Bradley Wiggins, 24, from London, came in next, winning gold in the individual men’s pursuit.
The achievements in Athens were matched by the English cricket team at the Oval, where they beat the West Indies by 10 wickets, equalling England’s 1929 record of seven successive Test match victories.
Advertisement
Britain’s Olympic medal haul should shine even brighter today as Paula Radcliffe runs for gold in the women’s marathon.
Pinsent and his fellow rowers, James Cracknell, Steve Williams and Ed Coode took the lead, lost it to the Canadians and then won it back in a thrilling sprint finish to a six-minute 2,000 metre coxless fours race.
Pinsent, who was once told by his doctor that he had the biggest lung capacity of any man in Britain at 8.5 litres, led the charge. A photo-finish image decided the British team had won by eight-hundredths of a second.
Pinsent, 33, sobbed so much as the national anthem was played and the Union flag hoisted at the medal ceremony that his laurel wreath dropped to the floor.
“We didn’t know at first who had won,” he said. “The Canadians shouted across ‘Who won? Who won?’ and the only thing that gave it away was when all the Union Jacks in the crowd suddenly went up.”
Advertisement
Cracknell, 32, said: “If you try and put four years of emotions into six minutes you end up in a scrambled heap.”
The Britons had only been rowing together as a team for six weeks. Alex Partridge, 23, who had to withdraw with a collapsed lung, was replaced by Coode, who had narrowly missed out on a medal after finishing fourth in the coxless pairs in Sydney.
Pinsent and his team called the boat “Alex Partridge” in honour of the injured crew member. Partridge, who watched the race in London, said: “In an odd way this is the best moment of my life.”
Pinsent had said before the race that it was probably his last Olympics, but then reminded everyone that Steven Redgrave had said the same publicly after their win in Atlanta in 1996.
The draw of the water is likely to be too much for Pinsent. The world championships are being staged in 2006 on Dorney Lake, the new £17m rowing facility at Eton College where both he and Coode, 29, were pupils.
Advertisement
Pinsent, who became the first Etonian to win an Olympic gold medal for 32 years when he won his first medal with Redgrave in the coxless pairs in Barcelona in 1992, has helped oversee the project.
If he wins gold in Beijing in 2008, Pinsent will be tempted to defend his title in 2012 at the age of 41, especially if the Olympics are held in London. Cherie Blair was yesterday named as an ambassador for the British bid.
Yesterday Pinsent said he would not make a decision until the “washing machine” of emotion had run its course. But Redgrave said: “He has got the capability of not just winning the next Olympics but the Olympics after that.”
Pinsent’s wife Demetra, a management consultant from Toronto, also gave him the green light to carry on. “With him I could go through another 16 years of it, that’s fine. If he decides he wants to carry on that would be the right decision,” she said.
“On the podium I’ve never seen Matthew that emotional or that tired. But there was also the pride of seeing the hard work of four years come to fruition, knowing how much effort he has put into everything and how many hours of each day.”