He's Sir Russell these days - even the Queen has forgiven him for crossing over to Switzerland and now the US - and has a perfect 20 wins and no defeats in America's Cup history.
What sets him apart, according to the people who know him, is his competitiveness. Even his sister tells a story that if they were eating porridge at the breakfast table together as children, Coutts would have to finish first.
Burling has a similar streak.
"Pete is pretty good at sailing," Tuke says, being deliberately understated. "He is really competitive in everything he does and wants to be the best no matter if it's sailing or anything. I think that's what helps us to achieve.
"He's always thinking. He's pretty serious and always thinking about what the best outcome might be."
So far those outcomes have been pretty favourable. Burling won his first world title at 15, was New Zealand's youngest Olympic sailor when he competed as a 17-year-old in Beijing and this week became the second-youngest Kiwi sailor behind Bruce Kendall (1984) to medal at an Olympics.
He's 21, going on 31 such is his maturity and level-headedness. Amid the fuss around the fact he and Tuke won New Zealand's 100th Olympic medal, Burling has shown little more emotion than offer his partner a quick hug and a simple, "it's pretty cool".
He's not being dismissive of what he's achieved, far from it, but you get the sense this is the beginning rather than the end.
He's expressed an interest in getting into the America's Cup, heightening the comparisons with Coutts, and Coutts is said to be impressed with what he sees in the youngster.
"Russell has been one of my sporting heroes," Burling says. "It's really impressive how he won the gold in 1984 and managed to go on and now he's Mr America's Cup; winning it again and again for different nations and teams. Just an amazing yachtsman.
"It's a big mantle. But the expectations we put on ourselves outweigh the expectations others put on us. We have always got pressure and expectations. I think it's one of things Blair and I do pretty well. We don't get too wound up about things and don't change too much. We go in and get on with the job at hand."
Winning a medal in Weymouth has been their focus for the past four years and their pursuit of that saw them enter in a close relationship with their biggest rivals, Australia's Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen.
The two crews, who have been the best in the world over the past two years, became training partners three years ago and their relationship even extended to trading information at the Olympics.
It might seem highly unusual, to be helping the enemy, but it wasn't the way both crews saw it.
"We knew about a year ago they would be the team to beat," Outteridge says. "We had a chat about the next year and decided that if we were going to train with the other best team in the world, that's better than not training with them and not knowing what they are up to and I'm sure they thought the same thing.
"It was all about working together to get halfway through the Olympics and then fighting it out at the end. And it's worked out exactly how we hoped it would."
Outteridge would say that considering he and Jensen claimed gold but the Australian combination have also won three of the last four world titles - Burling and Tuke finished second in the last two world championships.
Outteridge will soon join Team Korea as skipper and helmsman for their America's Cup challenge, assuming they make it to the start line, proving it's possible to interchange between big boats and smaller Olympic classes.
Burling doesn't really know what he will do next but it will involve a mast and sail.
As he says, "I suppose I have a pretty good feel for how to make a boat go fast".
