Blog
28 August 2008
The 2008 Danish Open (27 – 31 August) is being hosted by the Royal Danish Yacht Club in Frederikshavn for the first time and will see competitors race in identical DS37 boats. The event boasts another competitive entry list, with over half of entrants placed in the top ten of the ISAF World Rankings. Tour leader, Ian Williams will line up against 11 others, including current ISAF World Number 1 Mathieu Richard (French Match Racing Team/ Team French Spirit ) and Bjorn Hansen (Alandia Sailing Team), who is trailing Williams by seven points on the Tour.
Host nation Denmark will be hoping for a repeat of the 2007 result, where local sailors Jesper Radich (Radich Racing Team) and Peter Wibroe (Wibroe Racing Team), who will both return for the 2008 event, finished first and second respectively.
Team Pindar is in good shape going into the fifth stage on the Tour. The crew enjoyed an excellent start to August, winning the SB3 class at Skandia Cowes week.
Speaking after a training session in Sweden, Ian said; “We’ve made a solid start during the first half of the 2008 Tour but we now have to focus on building a more substantial lead and we’ve still yet to win an event this season. To win at Cowes Week was a great boost and we’ll be looking to build on that success here and in the coming events.“
The next few months is an intense period of racing on the World Match Racing Tour, with four events taking place in just seven weeks.
21 August 2008
It has been a while now since our last World Match Racing Tour event and I have been busy in the intervening time on a number of things. First off, I spent a day at Brands Hatch with Andy Priaulx, the 3 times World Touring Car Champion. He took me for a spin round the track in his BMW [3-series] which was great fun and it was also very interesting to meet another World Champion and find out about what it takes to succeed in a different sport.
I have also spent some time with the Russian Team for the upcoming Volvo Ocean Race as a testing helmsman. It was a great experience for me to do some sailing on a latest generation Volvo 70 and feed back my thoughts into their development. These boats are fantastically powerful beasts, rather similar to the Open 60s, but able to be fine tuned a little more as they are sailed by 10 people rather than single-handed.
Most recently, Team Pindar took on Cowes Week in an SB3 as part of our training schedule for the World Match Racing Tour. We had felt that in Sweden we finished poorly due to a weakness in tackling unexpected situations which came up as a result of the fickle breezes. Well Cowes Week is nothing if not full of surprises so we felt this would be a good opportunity to work on this area of our game. The week went well with Team Pindar achieving a clear progression in performance as the week unfolded, culminating in us winning the last race which was enough to give us the overall series.
We are now approaching an intense period of competition on the World Tour with 4 events in the space of 7 weeks. The race for the World Title will become a lot clearer in that time and our goal is certainly to try to extend our lead to put us in command going to Malaysia at the end of the year.
24 June 2008
In between events this year I have been helping out some of our Olympic hopefuls with their preparations for this year’s Olympics. Introduced for this Olympics is a new format which includes a “medal race”. For the last race of the regatta, the top 10 teams are selected and race on a shorter course. The race is umpired, counts for double points and is non-discardable. This format introduces a lot of parallels with match racing, particularly the fact that it is umpired and that it is quite likely that a team will be focusing on particular boats that are close to them in the overall standings.
I have been working with the Yngling girls (Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson) for a couple of years now. They are the current World and European Champions so are a good bet to bring home the chocolates from China. I have also recently done a session with our 470 representatives, Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield, and Christina Bassadone and Saskia Clarke.
The Olympics is something that I would have loved to have competed in. When I was growing up, all the signs were that match racing would become increasingly prevalent in the Olympics and that was where I chose to concentrate my efforts, finishing runner-up in the Olympic trials for Sydney. Unfortunately, after the 2000 Olympics, match racing was dropped from the Olympic regatta and the opportunity to realise that dream evaporated.
Eight years on, it is great to be back involved in the Olympics. Although my part is a very small one, it will be very satisfying if I can make a difference in helping the British representatives achieve their dreams. When growing up, Joe and I actually sailed together in a cadet for half a season (against Nick) so I was particularly pleased to have some input into their campaign.
I wish the whole of Team GBR the very best of luck in China and will be following the results very closely throughout the two weeks in August.
18 June 2008
We’re now back from Korea and immediately into planning the rest of the year. Coming up we’ve got Match Cup Sweden followed by quite a long break before Denmark at the end of August. Reflecting on Korea, the most obvious positive aspect is the amazing level of consistency we’ve shown on the World Tour so far this year. We’ve now qualified for all 3 semi-finals. To put this in perspective, no other team has qualified for more than 1 semi-final yet this year. But we’re not taking anything for granted. With the way the scoring works there is a big premium on winning regattas and it is with that in mind that we will be going to Sweden next Thursday for 5 days’ training before embarking on Match Cup Sweden. This has not been a happy hunting ground for us in the past but this year we feel well enough prepared to mount a strong challenge for one of the most prestigious titles in the sport.
20 May 2008
Match Race Germany was now a full week ago and, as Korea is not for another 2 weeks, I have had time to reflect on how the season has gone so far and what we need to do successfully defend the Title. The good news is that we are the only team that has shown any consistency over both events so far this year. At both events we have qualified relatively comfortably for the semi-finals and no other team has managed to do that. Our win/loss ratio over the 2 events is 22 wins and 8 losses. Comparing that to the team in second place, Alandia Sailing Team (Bjorn Hansen) who are on 15 wins and 12 losses, or the third placed team Shosholoza (Paolo Cian) who are on 14 wins and 11 losses, shows that we really have dominated so far. At some point this season we need to start converting our dominance into top results. A string of 3rds and 4ths just won’t cut it at the end of the season. However, for the moment we will continue to approach regattas in the same manner and hope that the results will come.
