ISAF Youth Worlds

What a great result at the Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships for RYA Team GBR. A great result for our youth team who collectively won the Volvo Trophy for top nation, and a stunning result in particular for the Peters family. Frances Peters, crewed by Claire Lasko, took gold in the girls' 29er. Not to be outdone, 15-year-old brother James, crewed by Ed Fitzgerald who turned 16 just after the regatta, did the same in the boys' 29er. Add those two golds to the bronze won by James Ellis and Andrew Glover in the SL16 catamaran, and GBR was the only nation to take three medals at the event in Århus, Denmark.

Incredibly this was the first time since 1996 that GBR has won the Volvo Trophy, with the team's amalgamated scores across all seven disciplines giving a final tally of 359 points, comfortably ahead of New Zealand (331) and Australia (329). It's a pity there is no equivalent team medal awarded in the Olympic Regatta, such as we see for example in equestrian and gymnastic events. Instead, top nation is judged by number of medals won. Even by this Olympic measure, Team GBR was still top dog at the Youth Worlds, with two golds and one bronze edging out Cyprus with two golds, and Australia with one gold and one bronze.

Cyprus?! Yes, you read that right. Hardly a powerhouse of competitive sailing, so all the more impressive for that. And Britain can take some credit for Cyprus's success too, thanks to the efforts of coaching legend Jim Saltonstall. Jim has long been considered the founding father of youth sailing in this country, but in more recent years he has spread his wings to other causes. In 2002, Jim became the ISAF World Youth Sailing Trust coach, extending the benefit of his vast knowledge and communication skills to the full range of athletes competing at the Youth Worlds. With the ISAF Athlete Participation Programme (APP) introduced in 2003, Jim's brief was expanded to support the sailors selected for the APP and since that time he has mentored more than 120 sailors from 41 nations. The success of Jim and the APP was amply demonstrated this year by Pavlos Kontides of Cyprus, who first appeared at the Youth Worlds in 2004 on the APP, and this year in the Laser won his second Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championship title.

For this, and many other reasons, Jim was honoured in Århus for his amazing achievements. Denmark marked his 30th and final ISAF Youth Worlds, and everyone will be sad to see him go. ISAF President Göran Petersson said: "Jim has inspired countless youth sailors to achieve their best. His energy, passion, dedication and sense of fun are invigorating. Those who have been coached by Jim are fortunate to have benefited from his expertise. ISAF thanks Jim for all he has contributed to youth sailing and youth sailors around the world."

Ben Ainslie, who first came to prominence after winning the ISAF Youth World Championship during Jim's tenure as GBR coach, sent a message to his old friend: "I just want to say a huge thank you from me and my generation of sailors like Iain Percy and Nick Rogers. Jim, you were the guy that got us into international sailing, you got us on the road. Thank you for all your efforts with British sailing and with the international youth here at events like this. You have spent years passing on your knowledge which has made such a huge difference to so many people. Not bad for a Queen's peasant!

Jim became a ‘Queen's peasant' in 1997 when he was awarded a MBE for Services Yachting and to Young People. No doubt Jim will continue to coach for many years to come, but Århus marked the end of an era. Jim said: "I look back at all that time and it's been marvellous to see so many of those sailors who've been through the Youth Worlds to go on to the Olympic platform and the America's Cup platform and go on to be successful. That is the job satisfaction of being the ISAF Youth Coach as well as the GBR Youth Coach. I'll sadly miss it, I really will. It's been awesome. If I had my life to live again I'd have done exactly the same."

Irish Sea crossing

Talking of youth sailing, here's an achievement of a very different kind. Northern Ireland's Young Sailor of the Year, Tiffany Brien, sailed across 27 miles of Irish Sea in her Laser Radial. The  17-year-old took on the challenge to raise funds for disabled sailing charity Belfast Lough Sailability. The money raised will buy Northern Ireland's first ever SKUD boat, the new Paralympic boat. As a result the aim is to have a Paralympic competitor to represent the province at the 2012 Paralympic Games.

Tiffany gave her reasons for taking on the crossing: ‘'Disabled people should be entitled to the same opportunities as everyone else. Hearing Bill Foster, Chairman of Belfast Lough Sailability, speak about how Sailability has already made drastic changes to the lives of disabled people in Northern Ireland made me determined to take on a really testing challenge to show my support, raise funds and enable Sailability to achieve their objectives.''

Tiffany's own objective is to make it to the 2012 Olympic Games. She has already notched up quite an impressive CV, being first girl in the Irish Youth Championships, current Northern Ireland Youth Champion, Northern Ireland Young Sailor of the Year and representing her country at the past two Volvo ISAF Youth World Championships.

Gotham City

As I write this, I'm a few days from departing for Gotham City, Ben Ainslie's description for Qingdao where the fog can mysteriously descend on the city with precious little warning. So if Qingdao is Gotham City, does that make Ben Batman? Let's hope so. He's the best superhero we've got, although of course we've got a few others besides.
 
The identity of our caped crusaders has been known for some time. By contrast, the Dutch Yngling team only learned its identity at the beginning of July, a mere four weeks before the Olympic Regatta begins. From the nine full-time sailors that were rotated through three identical Yngling boats, the sailors to have won selection are Mandy Mulder, Annemieke Bes and Merel Witteveen. This is the first time I've heard of Olympic sailors being put together through an ‘arranged marriage', as opposed to choosing their own sailing partners. Dutch coach Maurice Paardenkooper was sounding very confident about this unorthodox selection method, and says he has been approached by a number of other nations who are considering doing similar things. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we have yet to see how the Dutch girls perform together in Qingdao. If they end up winning a medal, then perhaps other teams will pursue this option for 2012.

I don't know what criteria Maurice used to select the three lucky candidates, although presumably it wasn't purely results based, but took into account the chemistry between the three girls, that magic extra ingredient that you need for success at the top level. To take the other extreme from the arranged marriage scenario, there are those life-long friends from Exmouth representing Great Britain, Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes. Now, what are the chances of the nation's best 49er helm and best 49er crew both hailing from the same small town of Exmouth? Not very high. But perhaps this highlights that team work is not all about putting the most technically proficient specimens into the same boat and hoping for the best. Some of our 470 teams in the past have been marriages of convenience, and when the going got tough, the team fell apart at the seams. That is unlikely to happen with Stevie and Ben, who have more than 20 years of bad jokes to fall back on if they find themselves struggling in Qingdao.

Not normally like this?

What might also make Stevie and Ben grumpy from time to time is that they have been on a big weight loss programme for Qingdao. With the predicted driftathon, that's what nearly every Olympic athlete has been doing.

Equipment optimisation has also been a high priority, with sailors looking for every ounce of power they can squeeze out of their boats. Again, though, the Dutch have taken this to a new level, with Tornado representatives Mitch Booth (formerly Australian) and Pim Nieuwenhuis revealing that they will be using a small and very flat gennaker for the Olympics. Why smaller and flatter? Because they plan to use it upwind as well as downwind. Yes, three sails all the way round the course.

I won't dwell on this too much, as I don't want to steal my colleague Jeremy Evans's thunder, but talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. The Dutch team say they have developed this radical new sail in secret with the Puerto Rican and USA teams. Will they actually use it for the Games? It will be interesting to see. Part of me wonders whether the timing of this, two weeks before the regatta, was to destabilise the preparations of their rivals and send them off on a wild-goose chase to develop a copy-cat sail. Or maybe Mitch has taken the view that it is better to roll the dice for his last Olympic campaign, in a last-ditch bid to add gold to his collection of silver and bronze from past Olympic Regattas.

If anyone does go for the upwind gennaker approach, they will be praying Qingdao lives up to - or is that down to - its awful reputation. If the wind never blows over 10 knots, then Mitch's daring and innovation could be well rewarded. But that is a big ‘if'. Just days before the opening ceremony, photos appeared of Rafael Trujillo, the Athens silver medallist in the Finn, training off Qingdao in up to 25 knots of wind. The Spaniard's coach, former Italian Finn representative Michele Marchesini, says the combination of big wind, big waves, and that carpet of green algae which refuses to go away, makes for some unique challenges. "When planing down waves and the bow dives through a weed patch, boatspeed decreases even quicker than usual with all this green stuff flying out of the way. It is also quite interesting to see how, as everybody lost quite few kilos for racing here with the expected light winds, differences in speed in the breeze are bigger."

Has there even been a stranger build-up to an Olympic Regatta? Ben Ainslie and our other superheroes will need every tool in their utility belts to guarantee gold in Gotham City.