Remember When.. Tom Burton OAM

In just 12 days time, the 2018 NSW Champions of Sport Ceremony will celebrate the best of NSW sport, with the induction of five athletes in to the NSW Hall of Champions, and the announcement of the 2018 NSW Sports Awards winners. Counting down to the event, we talk to past NSW Athletes of the Year and NSW Athletes of the Year with a Disability and ask them to share their great joys and triumphs as well as life post their ‘dream year’.

Athlete: Tom Burton OAM
Sport: Sailing
Event: Men's Laser - 2016 Rio Olympics
NSW Athlete of the Year: 2016

By Carson Parodi, Media & Content Intern - Sport NSW

Tom Burton imagines himself being selected to represent Australia at the Olympic games. He envisions himself standing on top of an Olympic podium, he hears the Olympic crowd and feels the surprising weight of an Olympic gold medal being placed around his neck.

There’s something important about the imagination of this success, about visualising the competition before it takes place. Scientists are just beginning to tap into it and discover how it may be impacting some of the most successful athletes, but Burton may have been ahead of the curve in that regard.

“Since I was a kid, I have had many dreams about going to the Olympics and winning,” Burton says. “They are all a little fairytale but that’s basically because while dreaming you build it up to be the biggest thing in the world.”

This dream, these visualisations, eventually helped Burton stand atop the sailing world at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Entering the final race of men’s laser sailing, Burton was slotted in second place, guaranteed to medal in his first-ever Olympic games. But with the order of the top three finishes still hanging in the balance, a sliver of possibility was enough to get him scheming against gold medal favourite, Tonci Stipanovic, of Croatia.

“Basically, doing everything I could to the best of my abilities and letting the cards fall where they may was kind of the strategy going into that race,” Burton says. “Because in sailing, it doesn't just come down to how you perform on the day. It is impacted a lot by what other people do.”

At the beginning of the race, Burton skilfully baited Stipanovic into a penalty, which set the Croatian back. But Burton then had to quickly shift his aim towards third place. He craftily manoeuvred himself past the other competitors one by one until, on the last turn, he found the inside lane around a buoy, putting himself in third as he crossed the finish line.

It was this miraculous, yet calculated, performance that allowed Burton to win gold – something he says validates all the accomplishments and stepping stones he conquered on his way to the top of the sailing world.

In the months that followed the Olympics, Burton won countless awards, including the Sport NSW 2016 NSW Athlete of the Year – becoming just the second sailor in the events history to do so.

“In previous years I had attended awards nights and watched others accept accolades for awesome achievements throughout the year and always thought to beat people like that I would need an awesome achievement of my own,” Burton says. “Which I eventually managed in 2016.”

But with a career dedicated to winning an Olympic gold, Burton admits his dreams never went as far as visualising himself receiving an award like this.

“All the years and hours training for the goal, doing the hard yards, as they say, the only thing going through my mind was the reward at the end of the competition,” Burton says.

“Not the reward after the reward.”

Join us at the announcement of this year's NSW Sports Awards winners, alongside the induction of five icons of NSW sport into the NSW Hall of Champions, at the 2018 NSW Champions of Sport Ceremony.

Tickets to the event are just $175 per individual, or $1,700 for a table of 10.

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