UP a creek without a paddle. It is a phrase which some might apply to the efforts of the national football team as they prepare to battle Slovaks and Slovenians this fortnight to keep their head above water in the grim white knuckle ride which is qualification for next summer’s World Cup finals. But David Florence is one Scot with rather more form for navigating the choppy waters at the sharp end of his sport.

Today in the picturesque Pyrenees town of Pau, the 35-year-old from Aberdeen will have paddle in hand as he hopes to record a hat-trick of C1 world championship titles in the last five years. This year’s event certainly got off to a good start for him, with yesterday’s silver medal in the C1 team event in the company of Ryan Westley and Adam Burgess.

The competition is returning after a one-year absence, with this most single-minded of Scottish sportsmen otherwise detained during 2016 recording his third successive Olympic silver medal in the C2 category, alongside Richard Hounslow, the man with whom he doubled up to claim his third world title in Prague in 2013.

Securing a silver medal at every Olympics since 2008 is, of course, the kind of achievement which only the Steve Redgraves of this world could contemplate cocking a sneer at. As much as Florence would love to upgrade it for a gold in Tokyo – he only has one chance, as the C2 pairs category has been phased out of the Olympic schedule – canoe slalom is one of those strange events where, while everyone obsesses about Olympic medals, cracking it at the world championships is actually a far harder ask, with the each of the top nations, Great Britain, Slovakia, Slovenia and hosts France – all permitted three boats in the competition.

“The Olympics has far more hype which goes along with it, far more interest from outside the sport,” said Florence, the reigning world champion from 2015 in London. “But the reality is that it is probably more of an achievement to win a medal at the world championships. It is actually far more competitive.

“In the Olympics it is only one boat per nation, while in the worlds it is three boats per nation. So sometimes the Brits and the Slovaks have both got three guys in the top ten, so straight away in the Olympics four of the top ten aren’t going to make it.”

The Hollywood ending would see Florence – who finished dead last in the C1 in Rio, before turning it round in the C2 – secure that individual gold in Tokyo in 2020, before saying sayonara to the sport and sailing off into the sunset, but the example of Usain Bolt at the world athletics championships this summer only proves that time waits for no man, or lady.

For his part, Florence has stopped short of confirming that he will indeed call time on his career after that summer Olympics, while the BOA has even to clarify the selection procedure which could yet bring his medal bid to a more peremptory end. Once upon a time this 35-year-old used to beat himself up when things didn’t go awry, but he has learned to be more philosophical about his successes and failures, If he never gets that Olympic gold then so be it.

“Not really, I could finish today and I would be pretty happy ... not just with my results, but the good times I have had, the amazing opportunities to go to Olympic Games, the chance to stand on podiums on world cups, world championships,” he said. “It is not all about that gold, although obviously that is the ultimate. Even if I never won any more medals, I wouldn’t feel like I have wasted my life in any respect! I have had a lot of time doing something I love and enjoy and it has been great fun anyway.”

Not that he is the type to leave anything to chance. This is a man, after all, who picked up Mandarin in preparation for Beijing in 2008, and delighted reporters by speaking in fluent Portuguese in the lead-up to Rio. Japanese, presumably, is next on the list, while he has already given the technical drawings for the Tokyo white water events the once over.

“There’s a good chance Tokyo will be my last,” he added. “But I tend not to really concern myself too much about that until afterwards.

“Obviously I was hoping for more out in Rio, but I can’t say that I dwell on it,” said Florence, who travelled out to Brazil with a seven-week old child in tow. “I could have gone better in Rio but once I started I was still really fortunate to have been there and to have won another medal is great, not many people can say they have done that. It was a fairly tough time but she was really glad she could be there - my wife that is, not my daughter - she couldn’t care less! You never know, hopefully I can go and get a better one in Tokyo, that is the aim.”

First things first, though. And that means this week’s World Championships in Pau, and mastering the mysterious eddies of one of the more singular courses in the sport. “The British team have trained there for about five weeks this year so we have probably practised about as much there as anyone - barring the French,” he said. “I have won medals in World Cups there before, and the British in general have won medals there before, so it is a place I can go and be successful. But it is a very tricky place to paddle - one of the most inconsistent stretches of water – although sometimes that can work for you.

“I literally mean from one second to the next. The water moves a lot from side to side. The eddies change, the features change. Obviously luck comes into it as well.”

As for what happens after Tokyo, assuming that really is the end of the line, “obviously that would be something I would need to give some thought to”. Would the man who once auditioned for Tim Peake’s job on the international space station be tempted to give space tourism a go? “If someone wants to phone up and offer me a job with NASA then I would listen to what they have got to say,” he says.