You know that old cliché, ‘What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger'? Well, it's one that certainly resonates with Nathan Outteridge who, with crew Ben Austin, has just won the 49er World Championships.

There are many remarkable aspects to Nathan and Ben's victory in Melbourne at the beginning of the year, but the most remarkable is that three years earlier, Nathan was lying in a Sydney hospital bed wondering if he would ever walk again.

He had doing the long drive down from Sydney to Melbourne to compete in the Sail Melbourne regatta when he fell asleep at the wheel, in the middle of the day. He veered off the road, crashed, wrote off the car and both boats on the back. He nearly wrote off his body too.

Nathan was so badly injured, the doctors couldn't go to work on him right away. "They didn't operate on me for three or four days," Nathan recalls. "They told me, ‘If the operation goes well you may be OK, if not, you may not be walking.'" Fortunately for Nathan it was the former, and his recovery was good, considering the extent of his injuries. Walking was back on the agenda. Now it was time to see if competitive sailing could get back on the agenda.

To give you an idea of the extent of the damage, Nathan was in hospital for four weeks, and spent another six months in full-time recovery. This was a sailor who had won a hat trick of ISAF Youth World Championships in the 29er, and this was a frustrating time for someone so motivated. "It gave me a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do, whether to go to uni and get a job, or get into the 49er class and have a go at the Olympics. I thought to myself, the youth sailing had gone really well, so why not keep on going?"

By October 2005, just over nine months after the accident, Nathan was back on the water again as he started sailing with Ben Austin in the 49er. It had been a while since Australia had enjoyed any real success in the class. Not only that, but the 49er is a tough class to do well in from day one. It's a difficult boat to master, and friends and coaches warned Nathan and Ben not to expect too much from their first international season in 2006. "People told us, ‘Don't aim too high.' I was thinking of possibly getting a top 10 at the Worlds, but they said to just think about getting in the top 25 of the Gold Fleet."

Nathan and Ben listened to their advice, and set the sights accordingly, and so were all the more amazed to find themselves finishing 6th overall in their first 49er Worlds. The dynamic young duo - Nathan is 22, Ben is 26 - have continued their meteoric rise ever since. They took Bronze in last year's windy Worlds in Cascais, and now they have won on home waters in Australia.

When I asked Nathan which of these three World Championship performances most surprised him - because they certainly surprised me - he had no hesitation in highlighting that 6th place in 2006. "Getting that result in 2006 was massive, in terms of setting up our career in the 49er. I don't think we'd have gone on to achieve what we've done unless we'd got that 6th place early on."

To come in half way through an Olympic cycle, with no prior experience in the boat, and now to be ranked as one of the favourites for the Gold medal in China this August. It's almost unheard of in Olympic sailing. Chris Draper enjoyed very early success in the 49er too, coming 2nd at his second 49er World Championship in Hawaii 2002, and winning the following year at Cadiz 2003. But he had the benefit of a Silver medallist crew in the form of Simon Hiscocks. Neither Nathan nor Ben had prior experience of the 49er, although they both had strong backgrounds in other skiffs.

Nathan and Ben attribute a good part of their success to coach Emmett Lazich. A former International Moth World Champion, and an excellent skiff sailor in his own right, Emmett was responsible for coaching the Finnish 49er team to winning a shock Olympic Gold in Sydney 2000. That established Emmett as one of the brightest skiff coaches in the world, and now his young protégés success in Sorrento has confirmed that reputation.

When I asked Emmett how Nathan and Ben stacked up against some of the past or current greats in the 49er, he believes they're the measure of any of them. He says Nathan and Ben are very different characters, but complementary to each other's strengths and weaknesses. "Nathan is about maximising his talent, sailing with flair, and Ben is very meticulous, organised and hard working."

Ben says he knew he and Nathan would work out as a partnership from a very early stage because, "Nine out of ten times I was already thinking what he was thinking about what our next move or decision would be." So not much need to work on the communication skills then, which is always a massive part of 49er sailing? "No, actually, it's something we've worked on quite a bit," says Ben, "because we need to be thinking the same way ten out of ten times."

Watching them in Sorrento, they look very slick around the boat, their boathandling among the smoothest in the fleet. Nathan certainly sounds at home in the boat. "The 49er is a very dynamic boat, you can sail to gusts and windshifts. It's not like a Laser where you can't really go much faster if the breeze changes. I'm pretty good in changeable conditions, where there's a lot of risk-taking involved, and Ben is good when conditions are really stable, and keeping us positioned relative to the fleet."

So it's Nathan the strategist and Ben the tactician? "We'll monitor the conditions before the start, and decide what kind of day it is. We know that I'm better at the shifty stuff and he's better at the steadier stuff, and we'll consult with each other. If it's a tight tactical day I'll definitely get a lot more input from Ben, but if it's a strategic day I might do a little bit more."

One thing that they have learned from Emmett is to be patient, to be prepared to grind out a good result from a bad one. This is not easy in the 49er, where the races tend to be just two laps of a windward/leeward lasting 30 minutes or less. If you're last at the first mark, you've pretty much blown it. Nathan recalls just such a race, the day before the Medal Race. "We were last at the top mark and we got back to a 9th, and to pull back those points was really important to our position. In the past we might have tried to get back by risking everything out in one corner, but we got a few shifts up the middle. We have learned how to be patient."

The ability to climb through a wall of boats to the right end of the fleet is a skill we'd all like to learn, so I asked Nathan about his approach. "On a day like that, the trick was to look at the boats, but get them out of your mind, and then just look at the wind. Our coach just said, forget about the other boats. If there was a shift, and we had to tack, then we'd tack even if it was into someone's bad air, because the windshifts were so short lived that you'd miss it if you stayed on the wrong tack for more than 20 seconds.

"One skill is to forget about the other boats and just sail - even if it's through bad air. If we want to have a chance of getting back in the race, we have to get our heads straight and not worry about where we are in the fleet. Just sail the wind." And it is a skill. The ability to keep sailing at your best even when you know you're breathing bad air from the boat to windward. It's one of those skills that separates the best from the rest.

But before I blow any more smoke up the Aussies' transom, a word for our own lads Stevie and Ben. I have to say it was concerning just how quickly the Aussies seized control of the Medal Race when the Brits got the better start off the line. But there are a few factors to consider. The Aussies are a few kilos heavier, whereas Stevie and Ben are probably the lightest team in the front pack of the 49er fleet. The Medal Race took place in 18 knots plus, and Stevie and Ben are by no means slow in that stuff, but weight has to be a factor. Now let's remind ourselves of what the expected conditions are for Qingdao. Good.

More significantly perhaps was that they were using a new rig, and hadn't fully tuned it and got used to how it worked. More significant again was that Stevie and Ben really only put two weeks' training in before this event, and considering that, they were in remarkably good form. For them, 2008 is all about Qingdao. Sorrento was a mild distraction, and Stevie says they weren't all that concerned about getting a good result. "At least, that's what we told ourselves leading up to the event, but when it came down to it, we thought, ‘Er, I suppose people expect us to do well here, we'd better not disappoint them.' So they sailed their socks off, even though their boathandling and wind sense felt a bit ragged around the edges.

Ben Rhodes says in Cascais last year, everything felt so easy, it was though they couldn't put a foot wrong. In Sorrento, it felt like hard work. It seemed like God on this occasion was smiling on the Aussies. At the end of a four-race day on the way back to shore, one of the Aussie lower shrouds broke, resulting in a nasty kink to the lower mast which they later straightened on shore. Nathan was the first to admit that was a priceless piece of luck. "If that had happened half an hour earlier our results would have been quite a bit different from the way they worked out. So I thought, oh well, I'll take that piece of luck."

So Stevie and Ben were up against a charmed team. But finishing runner-up in the Worlds is no disgrace by any means, and personally I think it's the best result they could have wished for. Winning two Worlds in a row would have put a lot of pressure on for the Games. Now there are two favourites for the Gold medal, and it will be fascinating to see how it plays out between our boys and the Aussies this summer.