It has been
another great year for British sailing, with bumper medal hauls by Skandia Team
GBR in major events such as the ISAF World Championships in Cascais and the
Olympic Test Regatta in Qingdao. We had a pretty good result with our youth sailors
at the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds too.
But it doesn't
stop there. Looking through Yachts & Yachting's Racing Classes Guide for
2007-8, some quick analysis of British performances revealed we are top of the
pile in dinghy classes across the board, at both professional and amateur level.
I counted a
total of 32 world championships in the dinghy section of the Racing Classes
Guide, including a couple of classes such as the 470 and 420 where there are
men's and women's champions. Of these 32 championships, Great Britain won 11 of
them! A staggering result, and one that no other nation came close to
emulating. Next in line was Australia with four world championship victories,
and then three nations tied in third with three wins apiece - Denmark, USA and New
Zealand.
Perhaps this
goes some way to explaining Great Britain's prowess at Olympic level, simply a
strength in depth of dinghy sailing that just doesn't exist anywhere else in
the world. Congratulations to all our World Champions of 2007, particularly
Nick Craig who accounted for two of those 11 victories, taking the OK Worlds
for the third successive year as well as the Enterprise Worlds with Fiona
Clark.
Ferrets' Reunion
Of course,
another major factor in Skandia Team GBR's success is the excellent levels of
organisation and funding that have existed for the past 10 years. But that
isn't the whole story either. There are many elements which have contributed to
the team's ongoing success since that amazing medal haul in Sydney seven years
ago, and few would argue that one of the most vital building blocks to the
team's present-day successes stems back to something that started more than 30
years ago.
In 1977 Bob Bond, John Reed and Jim
Saltonstall began the RYA Youth Race Training Scheme. The idea was to take the
best young sailors from around the regions and bring them together to one venue
for several weekends' ‘squad' training, the idea being that if the best raced
against the best, then they could only get better.
Included in this training programme were
several ladies hoping to compete in the Women's World Championships which was a
big event in those days! So each winter - February through to Easter for the
next 23 years - young girls, boys and ladies gathered at either Queen Mary
Reservoir, Rutland Water, Grafham Water or Draycote Water to train as members
of the squad and then compete in the Youth Nationals, Women's Nationals with
the hope of qualifying for the World Youth Championships or Women's World
Championships that year.
To celebrate the 30th
anniversary of the first every youth training, Jim Saltonstall's wife Christine
has organised a reunion evening. "We thought it would be a great time to set up
a reunion for all those who went through the scheme over the past years to
catch up with old friends and rivals. So if you were a member of a squad
between 1977 and 2000 and you would like to join us, we have organised a
‘get-together' at the Royal Southern Yacht Club, on the River Hamble, near
Southampton on Saturday 16 February 2008 at 7.00pm."
Tickets are £11.00 each which includes
food and can be obtained from Christine Saltonstall, 7 Delft Close, Sarisbury
Southampton SO31 7TQ. Don't forget to include a return address. Or you can send
an email to: Christine@saltonstall.co.uk
RYA
challenge to ISAF
Good to see the RYA showing the guts to
stand up to a poorly-executed decision over the Olympic Classes for Weymouth
2012. If you've read my blog lately you'll have seen I've been campaigning hard
for change within the structure of ISAF Council.
If any more evidence were needed that
some national sailing authorities cannot be trusted to do what's best for the
long-term health of the sport, then it arrived in the form of an internal memo
from Yachting New Zealand's Olympic Committee. I quote:
"NZL is currently suffering in expensive
classes (Tornado & 49er) that are suited to younger (fit) sailors - so we
should avoid these. This seems to be caused through lack of money to create
fleets and competition in these classes."
Young and fit sailors in the Olympics?
The idea is preposterous. There are some things that you might think, but some
of those things you really should not commit to email, as pesky journalists
like me tend to get sent these things. Presumably one of those six members of
YNZ's Olympic Committee was not too happy with the statement made here, and
leaked it to a member of the multihull community who then forwarded it on to
me. Very embarrassing. Not that causing embarrassment was my aim, what I want
to see is a revote handled fairly, without all the tactical gamesmanship that
came into play in Estoril in November.
By issuing its open letter to ISAF
President Goran Petersson, the RYA has gauged that there is enough support from
other national authorities such as Yachting Australia to engineer a revote of
the Olympic slate at the ISAF Mid-Year Meeting in Qingdao next May. Hopefully,
having the meeting situated in Qingdao will serve as a timely reminder to the
members of ISAF Council. As they gaze out on a windless, glassy sea, they will
be able to picture a lacklustre Olympic Regatta next August. At which point
they might imagine how they might want to do everything in their power to make
Weymouth 2012 as exciting and televisually thrilling as possible. How about a
women's skiff and a multihull for starters? That would be my suggestion.
Multi-talented
mono sailor
Now if things are bad in the world of
Olympic sailing, they are not a patch on the parlous state of the America's
Cup. Unless of course, if by the time you are reading this, Alinghi has come to
its senses and emerged from its protracted period of sulky silence. As I write,
the rumours suggest Alinghi might even be weighing up the possibility of a
one-on-one match against the new Challenger of Record, BMW Oracle Racing, in
multihulls! Something for those soon-to-be-out-of-work Tornado sailors to do
after all.
I wonder what Jonathan McKee must make
of it all. I'm sure he's got better things on his mind right now, seeing as
he's half way round the world in the Barcelona Race. In case you haven't heard
of Jonathan, he's one of the USA's most talented sailors. He won an Olympic
gold medal steering a Flying Dutchman at Long Beach 1984 when in his early 20s.
Sixteen years later he won bronze with his brother Charlie in the 49er at the
Sydney Games. He's also the reigning Tasar World Champion, which he won with
his wife Libby.
He has done the last two America's Cups,
the most recent one as Luna Rossa's mainsheet trimmer, and in his first taste
of singlehanded offshore racing he was leading the Mini Transat in 2003 until
his rig broke just a few hundred miles before the finish. Now he's on his first
circumnavigation, sailing with former Tornado sailor and Volvo Ocean Race
veteran from Spain, Guillermo Altadill, aboard Estrella Damm.
Has any sailor scaled such heights
across such three diverse disciplines as the Olympics, the America's Cup and
the offshore world? It's hard to think of many. Lawrie Smith is one, Paul
Cayard is another, an American who has been to the Games, come close to winning
the America's Cup, and won the Whitbread Race. The first sailor who wins in all
three of these disciplines would, in my view, earn the right to call him or
herself the greatest sailor of all time.
Now Jonathan McKee is some way off
achieving that. He can tick off the Olympics, he's won that. But he has a way
to go in the America's Cup and the offshore world. At the time of writing he
was coming 8th out of the nine-boat Barcelona Race fleet, so he's
got an apprenticeship to serve here, as he would willingly admit. But there's
no doubting the fact that he is one of the most broadly talented sailors in the
world right now. And a very nice guy too. I got the chance to speak to him just
before he departed Barcelona in November.
I asked Jonathan why he has chosen such
a diverse career in professional sailing. "I certainly didn't set out to be the
most diverse yachtsman on the planet, it's just there are so many different
things to experience in our sport, and I wanted to try them." And yet you'd
wonder how relevant the skills from short-course Olympic racing would be to
something like a round-the-world race. "I've never seen it like
that. If you know how to sail, you know how to sail. Making a boat go fast,
winning a race is not that different, whether it's around the buoys or around
the world. It's the same skills, the same psychology in many ways."
So I wondered
where Jonathan felt most comfortable, in which of the different sailing
environments he has experienced did he feel most at home? "Right now I feel
most at home on an Open 60, that's where my head is right now. I have actually
done quite a bit of ocean sailing over the years, even if that's not what I'm
best known for."
I asked him
what the most vivid moments of his career had been to date. "Those moments when
you win medals in the Olympics, first when I was 23 years old, then 40 years
old, sailing with my brother in a new type of boat. It's pretty hard to beat
those moments. The Olympics has been a fantastic experience for me, although
there have been plenty of other moments in my career too."
As for the
Barcelona Race, Estrella Damm was given little chance of winning or even making
the podium. So how does a sailor who's used to winning measure success in an
event where he's a virtual beginner? "Finishing the race. Getting around the
world in an Open 60 would be a gigantic accomplishment. To do it without
stopping - even better." It will be interesting to see if the Barcelona Race is
merely the beginning of a new chapter in Jonathan's career, or if once around
the world will be enough. One thing's for sure, he's not missing out on any
America's Cup work right now!