Nick Rogers and Jo Glanfield are off to their second Olympic Games, to see if they can make amends for the heart-crushing fourth place they scored in Sydney three years ago. At the Weymouth trials for the 470 back in April 2000, it was in fact a certain Chris Draper and Dan Newman who won that event and relegated Rogers and Glanfield to the runner-up spot. But Draper's unproven international form convinced the selectors to extend the trials to further international regattas, and Roger's sixth place at the Worlds - far ahead of Draper or any other Brit - was enough to seal his flight to Sydney.
‘Chips' Draper has more than made up for the disappointment of missing Sydney with his subsequent mastery of the 49er class, whilst that other Chips, Howarth, who was another also-ran from those 470 trials in 2000, has been having quite a year across a range of classes. It's worth noting too, that when he isn't out winning Fireball Worlds or RS800 Nationals, he finds time to squeeze in a 40-hour week at Selden Mast, the manufacturer of Proctor spars.
Whilst he finds himself steering the RS800 more than anything else these days, he still describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool 470 sailor. "I love squeezing every last ounce of speed out of a boat, going for every inch of extra gain that you can make on the boats around you," he says. "That's why I love coming back to the Fireball even after sailing much faster boats like the 800, and I think that's why Chips Draper has done so well in the 49er. He's still a 470 sailor at heart and I would imagine he's taken that same approach of squeezing every last drop of speed out of the boat to become so successful in the 49er."
Chips Howarth has had a remarkable year, which kicked off with the Fireball Worlds in Kenya, an event that he and Vyv Townend dominated from start to finish. The summer was spent sailing the RS800, culminating in winning the nationals at Hayling Island with Ali Hall crewing this time. He then went for a further double in these classes by competing at the Holt Tide Ride at Hayling Island in late September, followed the subsequent weekend by the traditional classes' answer to the Tide Ride, the Symmetric Grand Prix at Datchet Water. Chips won the Datchet event in the Fireball, but finished second in the 800s at Hayling.
"What was particularly annoying about the Tide Ride was that I lost to Barrie Edgington," he says. "I've been borrowing Barrie's boat this year at the open meetings, and it was getting to him that I was scoring better results than he was." So with each of the helms in separate boats for the Tide Ride, the needle match was on. "We were in the same qualifying group as him, and we won all eight of our qualifying races before the final." But in the Tide Ride, the finals are a one-race, winner-takes-all scenario, which often throws up some unexpected winners. And Chips' spectacular qualifying form meant nothing in the final, when Barrie took his revenge and beat Chips to the punch.
Chips admits to being no great fan of the event. "I think it's more enjoyable to watch the Tide Ride from the balcony of the sailing club than to compete in it," he says, adding that the course on one day was set right in the middle of the channel, which is the entrance to Chichester Harbour. "You'd have yachts and powerboats going through the middle of the course all the time, and at one point we had the biggest powerboat that I've ever seen come into Chichester Harbour. The bow must have been at about mast height, and the only way for us to get out of the way was to capsize, otherwise he'd have squashed us."
Not that the Symmetric Grand Prix was a walk in the park. With the water already quite low at Datchet, squeezing 102 boats from eight different classes on to one massed start line was a tall order, but Chips loved this event. "I think give it a couple of years and this will be the biggest event on the dinghy calendar," he says. "The enthusiasm that people have for these classes is enormous, and I think it will just go from strength to strength."
Clearly some competitors carried their enthusiasm on to the water, with Chips witnessing two Fireball sinkings, one that came off worse from a Javelin, the other from an Osprey. Not surprisingly, Chips' key to success was staying out of trouble and getting away from the other boats as quickly as possible. "I hate doing it under normal circumstances, but this regatta you just had to pick one end of the line to start from and smash that corner of the beat. It didn't seem to matter which corner you smashed, just as long as you didn't go up the middle where there was no wind."
The Fireballs were the slowest class there in handicap terms, and yet Chips' and Vyv's ability to get around the first mark in the top ten boats stood them in good stead for the rest of the race. "They also set some tight reaches which were great for us and our little spinnakers, but the 505s just couldn't fly them down those legs."
In fact, a strong performance from a number of the top Fireballs made them team prize winners for the weekend, despite their speed disadvantage. Chips liked to think that they did well through superior sailing rather than any anomaly in the handicap system, but too many performances like that and the RYA might have to peg back their Portsmouth Number a notch or two. Looking down the results, Chips thought the spread of classes through the top 10 suggested the respective handicaps of these eight classes worked pretty well. But the one that stood out as a bit strange to Chips were the positions of the top Hornets. Andy Long and Mark McGarry came 18th, and just behind were Jamie Lea and Matt Poyntz in 19th. It was Jamie Lea's name that leapt off the page to Chips, and anyone who knows Jamie's track record will agree that 19th seems unusually low for a sailor of his calibre. Perhaps it is a sign that, contrary to the Fireball, the Hornet could be given a leg up on the PN system by a number or two.
Jamie has spent the last few years at the front of the Melges 24 fleet. But for me the most remarkable achievement in his career is that in the trials for the 1996 Olympics, Jamie finished runner-up as an overweight 470 helm to the dynamic duo of John Merricks and Ian Walker. Recognising that he was perhaps too big ever to be truly competitive in the 470, he bulked up to race the Finn, and then came second in the following trials for the Sydney 2000 Games, this time playing bridesmaid to a certain Iain Percy. Whether anyone has tried to span two such dramatically different classes in their career I don't know, but to have got to such a high level in both when you were physically unsuited to neither is quite something. To be honest, Jamie's size was probably best suited to a Laser, but he probably would have found himself finishing up second best to another well-known Olympic medallist from these shores.
Anyway, back to Datchet, and Chips couldn't enthuse enough about this event. "The social was great, and it was good to catch up with people from so many other classes. Datchet isn't normally the greatest of places for a social scene, but loads of people were camping in the field below and there was a great atmosphere." He said the Javelin class had done a fantastic job of getting the ball rolling, and now the banner would be passed on to one of the other classes next year, to be held at a different venue, possibly Grafham Water. "I think this event would be ideally suited to being run in the Midlands," says Chips, "because the power base for these classes tends to be in the North. The newer asymmetric classes are a bit of a southern phenomenon, they've not really caught on up North."
The fact that these classes are thriving in the face of newer, sexier competition is testament to the unquenchable enthusiasm the sailors have for their particular class. "It's a matter of once a Javelin sailor, always a Javelin sailor for many of these people, whereas there's probably not such loyalty towards some of the newer classes," Chips believes, and this is certainly an interesting point. The newer asymmetric boats tend to have a much more transient fan base, with people tending to move classes every couple of years or so. There are merits to both trends, but one of the attractions of the more established classes must be the opportunity to build friendships that could last 10, 20 or 30 years. The only other way of doing it is to move all your mates lock, stock and barrel from one class to the other. This happened with the Lark fleet a few years back, when en masse the sailors that populated the Lark migrated to the B14 class. But quite whether that will ever happen again is not clear.
The older classes have lacked the marketing clout of the newer manufacturer-led boats like the RS stable, but the combined approach of the Symmetric Grand Prix is bringing about all sorts of benefits. Whereas the Javelin and Osprey might have seen each other as rivals in the past, they are now talking about holding joint national championships in the future. The 505 has really plummeted in popularity over the past few years, and is struggling to justify its presence at blue riband venues such Mounts Bay or Abersoch, and it is considering doubling up with other classes to bring back the economies of scale that it enjoyed in its heyday.
The runaway success for all these older classes to look up to is the Fireball, though, which has kept the asymmetric wolf from the door by marketing itself very cleverly and by rewriting the class rules to enable the boats to be constructed more cheaply. Indeed, Chips puts much of the Fireball's success down to the quality of the boats produced by Guy Winder. "If a class has a good builder making boats at sensible prices, then the class will thrive," says Chips. "I thought the Merlin was dead on its feet a few years ago, but there's an example of another class that Winder is building for, and they are doing fine."
It will be interesting to see if more traditional classes are invited to next year's Symmetric Grand Prix. For the classes that are not so good at marketing themselves, an initiative like this event is just the shot in the arm that these fleets need. Full marks to the Javelin Association for having the imagination and drive to create this regatta. I hear that Mike Pickles even received a letter of congratulations from the government's sports minister, Richard Caborn. Let's hope Chips' prediction comes true, and that the Symmetric Grand Prix becomes a regular high point of the calendar.
