Looking Gorgeous in the Mirror

Congratulations to Anna Mackenzie and Holly Scott, who have become the first girls ever to win the Mirror World Championship and the first British team to do so since 1997. Not only that, but the girls dominated the event in South Africa, taking the title with a day to spare in their Mirror, Simply Gorgeous. Teenagers Anna from Cumbria and Holly from Warwickshire have been working with RYA Mirror coaches Peter Aitken and Matt McGovern for some time as part of the class programmes.

RYA junior racing Manager Duncan Truswell said the girls have been working hard for this for some time. "For them this represents many years of competition, training and commitment which started long before their involvement with the RYA Mirror National Junior Squad in 2003. I know their coaches, parents and clubs will be very proud, and I am sure they all share my sentiments that it is well deserved for two really pleasant and determined young ladies."

It was a good Worlds all round for the Brits, with four teams finishing in the top 10, and young team Ed Fitzgerald and Chantal Crane coming 11th overall. Recent weeks have been busy with junior and world championships generally, with the 420 Worlds in New Zealand and 29er Worlds in Argentina, and the Optimist World Championship in Uruguay. The Oppie Worlds attracted 228 sailors to the event, including our five best Brits. Reigning National Champion Phil Sparks was 27th overall, with James Grant not far behind in 33rd.

At first glance these results might seem disappointing. After all, if we can dominate world sailing at a senior level, iein the Olympic classes and many other popular International classes, why not at junior level? According to Duncan Truswell, the level of professionalism in the Optimist class outstrips most senior classes, with a good number of the top sailors training full time.

Many of the South American Optimist sailors spend more time training on the water than they do studying in the class room, and in Singapore (population 4.5 million) there are 3,000 kids sailing Optimists regularly. Just about every kid in Singapore has a sail in an Optimist at some point because it's on the school curriculum. And guess what, there were five Singapore sailors in the top 15, which is almost unheard of in the Oppie Worlds. The rumour is that if Singapore had won the Worlds - and Griselda Khng came very close, finishing runner-up to Germany's Julian Autenrieth by just two points - the head coach would have won a £50,000 cash bonus.

Talking of cash bonuses, by the way, I've also heard a rumour that any Chinese athlete that wins Olympic Gold in 2008 will win a bonus of £2 million. Now, without wanting to state the obvious, that's twice as much as even Chris Tarrant is offering for answering 15 questions of increasing difficulty. But never mind taking home £2m in the UK, imagine what it could buy you in a country where the average wage for a factory worker is around £1,200 a year. When you hear that, it's no wonder that Olympic Manager of Skandia Team GBR, Stephen ‘Sparky' Park, reckons that China will finish in the top five nations in the Olympic Regatta next year. And all this from a virtual standing start from three or four years ago. By the way, what do you imagine is the Chinese cash bonus for winning silver or bronze? Zero. Do not pass go, do not collect £200, let alone the £2 million. There's a lot riding on that medal race.

To return to the Optimist, however, there are other factors that stand in the way of the Brits doing better and one is a matter of sheer genetics. Duncan Truswell tells me: "We find it hard to send people of the right size. Our kids have to move out of the class before they have enough experience." The same has been true down the years and perhaps explains why the likes of Ben Ainslie and Iain Percy have won Olympic medals at senior level and yet never came close to winning the Optimist World Championships. That said, finishing in 3rd place at this year's Worlds was Edgar Diminich from Ecuador who weighed in at a hefty (for Oppie sailors) 55kg. But this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Duncan believes that 27th and 33rd for the top two Brits was actually very respectable. While Phil Sharp has twice won the Optimist Nationals, the Worlds was his first major overseas regatta, and Duncan points out that both he and James posted very good scores in the second half of the regatta, suggesting they are fast learners. "Also, Johnny House's result didn't appear great, but he was knocked out during a race when his head got clipped by a competitor's boom on the reach, and he was taken off the course and missed the other races that day. So there's always more than meets the eye. The result's not important at this level, what matters is that they're learning and enjoying the sport. If they're still sailing in three years' time, then they could turn into very good sailors."

At senior level the ‘results don't matter' argument wouldn't wash. In the Olympics, our sailors are measured purely in terms of medals. But it's actually quite refreshing to hear this message come out of the RYA, which is sometimes criticised for getting too serious too early with the kids. "Our Oppie squad system is only six weekends a year," says Duncan, "and obviously we could do a lot more, but is that what the kids or the parents would want?"

With that in mind, perhaps the British Optimist results are pretty respectable after all. Presuming Phil Sharp qualifies for one of the five places available, he doesn't have too long to wait for the next World Championship, which takes place in Sardinia at the end of July. Perhaps this time he can crack the top 20, before he and his mates move through to the youth classes.

Ynglings not welcome

The International Sailing Federation has announced some dates for an evaluation event analysing equipment for a possible Women's High Performance Dinghy event at the 2012 Olympics. The trial will be held in Hyères in the south of France from 16-19 April, just before Hyères Olympic Regatta which begins a day later. Hopefully this will mean some of the world's best women sailors will get a chance to test the boats for themselves.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the woodwork for this event. Among the fundamental criteria set out by ISAF are:

The boat must be a monohull
The dinghy must be able to sail faster off the wind than the wind
The dinghy is for a crew of two women (average combined weight 120-140 kgs)
Targeting a price of 14,500 Euros ready to sail

The twin-trapeze 29erXX will be there, as will a standard single-trapeze 29er, along with a RS800 (possibly with modified deck layout) a twin-trapeze Cherub rebranded as a GT60, and an Yngling with three trapezes, an asymmetric and hydrofoils. Actually the Yngling rumour is not entirely reliable, so scrub that one.

We should get an early inkling of which boat is most likely to succeed, based on a report on the Evaluation Event which will be completed by the ISAF Mid-Year Meeting in early May. But it won't be until the 2007 ISAF Annual Conference this November in Athens that we'll find out which 10 events are selected for the 2012 Olympic Regatta. Bear in mind that there are currently 11 events, and so if the new women's skiff is to make it into the line-up, two existing classes have to be put out to grass.

This situation is going to turn Athens this November into a boiling cauldron of political manoeuvring as classes battle tooth and nail to retain their much cherished Olympic status. And in such a potentially poisonous atmosphere no class is safe, no matter how obvious its merits.

Water, water everywhere

One thing I hope these potential women's Olympic skiffs are rated for is their ability to hold water, not the briny variety but the stuff you drink. The ‘big' innovation in car design over the past 10 years has been to integrate cup holders into the interior of the car. Some executive cars even have push-button, electrically-operated, foldaway cup holders. Seriously, some of these car designers have too much time on their hands! But wouldn't it be nice to have some integrated water bottle holders built into our boats. So much of the time we end up taping water bottles to racks or having one lying around loosely in the boat.

In the International 14, part of my tacking routine involves kicking the water bottle back up underneath the foredeck whence it came. Most of us make do with bottles sloshing around in the bottom of the boat, only later regretting this haphazard approach when we capsize and watch the bottle floating away from the boat. The more organised amongst us might buy a bottle cage from a bike shop and tape it around the boom or a mast, and a small minority of uber-bimblers might even rivet the bottle cage on as a permanent fixture. But a note to boat manufacturers: please add water bottle holders. If it helps sell cars, maybe it helps sell boats too.

Bimble my ride

Talking of boat bimbling, there are some great bimbles on the Musto Skiff website at www.mustoskiff.com. The harder a boat is to sail - and surely there can't be much harder than a three-sailed trapeze singlehander - the more these little bimbles matter. You'll see it on the right-hand side of the home page, Pimp My Skiff. One bimble that is becoming popular in 49er circles is replacing the inner core of your trapeze adjuster rope with shockcord, so that your trapeze ring sits higher off the deck when it's not being used. The advantage here is that when you're flat-wiring in moderate to heavy wind and running from side to side in a tack, the trapeze ring is sitting higher which makes it easier to grab and hook on to. Then when you push out off the gunnel your body weight stretches the shockcord and you are back into your low-trapezing stance.

I'm considering incorporating the same idea into the kite retrieval line on the International 14. Currently the retrieval line is a little too short, which means the kite's shape is slightly distorted by the line constantly pulling on the sail cloth. But if you make it too long, the retrieval line can sometimes dangle in the water and worst of all, it has a nasty habit of catching over the sharp knuckle bow of the 14, kicking up unbelievable amounts of spray and causing speed-sapping drag. Maybe having the last five or six feet of line elasticated will allow us to have a longer retrieval line without the danger of it catching over the bow? I know, I know, I spend far too much of my own time thinking about these things without wasting yours too, so I'll shut up now. Boat bimbling - probably one of the geekiest pastimes known to man - but we can't help ourselves, can we!


 in the Olympic classes and many other popular International classes, why not at junior level? According to Duncan Truswell, the level of professionalism in the Optimist class outstrips most senior classes, with a good number of the top sailors training full time.