Babies and Volcanoes

Annie Lush must have been wondering if it was all worth the effort when she finally got to Hyeres to compete in Semaine Olympique Francaise. Hyeres in the South of France is a crazy venue. On the face of it, it seems very pleasant. Well, it is! It’s the South of France, lovely cafés, good restaurants, warm weather. What more could you ask? Well, seeing as we’re there for the sailing, some wind would be nice!

In Hyeres, when you ask for wind, you either get none or far too much. Nothing in between. Flat calm, or an ice-cold Mistral from the mountains. This year was another year of no wind, as I discovered on a trip to Hyeres to watch some medal race finals. Skandia’s Jo Rimmer had invited me and Kate Laven of the Daily Telegraph to visit the event, and we were driven around from race course to race course by Stephen ‘Sparky’ Park, who heads up Skandia Team GBR.

The logistics of getting sailors and boats efficiently too and from regattas is challenging at the best of times, but that volcano - Eyjafjallajokull - had been doing its damndest to stop people making it to Hyeres. Top Laser talent Nick Thompson was forced to abandon his trip to the event altogether, having struggled to make it back from the USA in time, while match racing world number one Annie Lush endured a determined journey from Palma to join her Elliot 6m team mates Lucy Macgregor and Ally Martin at the regatta.

Lush had been big boat racing in Palma, and hampered by the air traffic control restrictions, embarked upon a ferry crossing to Barcelona and train towards France. But with her travel complications then exacerbated by striking French train drivers, Annie was forced to plug the gaps in her transport via pedal-power on her road bike, cycling some seven hours in between public transport options with 17kg of sailing kit before finally making it to Hyeres. And then Annie and her team only finished 6th in the match racing, which for their high standards would have been a disappointment.

Mcgregor and team have been the stand-out British match racing talent in this new Olympic discipline, although there are others in the frame, such as Katie Archer who was steering the second British Elliot 6m at Hyeres. While Mcgregor/ Lush/ Martin are a constant team more or less in control of their own destiny, Archer is part of a squad of women who train in the UK and are rotated in and out of the Skandia Team GBR ‘B’ boat for international regattas. Coach Mark Nicholls makes recommendations for different combinations of sailors to compete at successive events, so it is up to the women to gel as a team for these regattas. In the world of rowing, this is standard practice, to be selected from a squad, but this is still new territory for sailing. Not uncharted territory, though, because you may recall the Dutch Yngling girls who ran Sarah Ayton/ Sarah Webb/ Pippa Wilson very close for Olympic gold in China. The three Dutch girls only knew they were going to Qingdao a month before the Games, yet they put up a very strong performance.

However in the new match racing discipline, there is further cause for running the squad system. With entries limited to 24 teams at ISAF events such as Hyeres, each nation is limited to just one place until all interested nations have booked their quota. So with Hyeres, for example, there were 13 nations occupying the first 13 places with the remainder up for grabs. Archer and the ‘B’ Squad took the second GBR berth. As to when Archer’s next opportunity comes along to race in one of the international events, that is up to the RYA to determine.

Sparky, like me, has long been a critic of match racing been voted into the Olympic line-up, believing it would do little or nothing to encourage greater women’s participation in Olympic competition. Nothing he has seen since has changed his mind. Sarah Ayton had been contemplating a match racing campaign but for the reasons described above - the lack of guaranteed access to international competition - she decided to look elsewhere.

Now Ayton has teamed up with Saskia Clark, who sailed in the last Games with Christina Bassadone. Pippa Wilson had been steering for Clark but the Olympic Champion, still only in her early 20s, has decided to take some time out of competition to work out her next move. Sparky is desperate to keep her in Skandia Team GBR in some capacity or another, whether as an athlete or on the support staff. For whatever reason, the team seems to struggle to find world-class women to fill the squad, so for proven performers like Wilson the door is always open. The same is true of Sarah Webb, who announced her pregnancy the day we were watching the medal racing in France. Sarah is expecting this October, but has said she plans to get back into competition for the 2011 season. “Professionally, the lure of a winning a medal on home waters is also a huge motivation for me, so I will discuss the options over the next few months with the Skandia Team GBR Manager and determine the path and class that give me the best chance of achieving my dream of a third gold in 2012.”

She was racing the 470 with Hannah Mills in Palma at the Princess Sofia Trophy in March, and had been training over the previous winter. But now, with an enforced break for the 2010 season, it’s hard to see how Sarah is going to work her way back into a position to win a gold medal in 2012. "It will be tough," she admits, "but then again Olympic victory is tough. We learn to become focused whilst racing and my husband is happy to be left holding the baby. Well, I haven’t told him yet, but I reckon he will be happy!" Husband, by the way, is Adam Gosling, a good sailor in his own right and a former Etchells World Champion.

There are few precedents in Olympic sailing for mothers winning medals. Actually I’m not aware of any, but I may be missing one or two names. Then again, Shirley Robertson mounted a late campaign for Qingdao and although she missed selection, she did win the bronze medal at the 2007 World Championship, while juggling the responsibility of being a mother of twins.

This time the two Sarahs (Shirley’s crew in Athens 2004) will be setting out to prove that you can have it all - babies and gold medals. From seeing the boat park in Hyeres, it is a growing trend. I came across Brazilian legend Robert Scheidt who was helping his wife, Gintare, pack up her Laser Radial after the medal race in Hyeres. Robert and Gintare got married soon after each had won a silver medal in Qingdao 2008, Robert in the Star and Gintare (maiden name, Volungeviciute) in the Radial. Now they have a baby boy, Eric, who was playing on his mum’s Laser when I met him.

Meanwhile, former 49er World Champion and Olympic medallist Chris Draper had flown home early from Hyeres to attend the birth of his new son, Harry, so it seems everyone is at it. Or at least there’s more it going on than there used to be.

As for Sparky’s concern about the lack of female talent, at least some of his leading ladies are turning in some hot performances, notably Megan Pascoe’s bronze in the 2.4mR Paralympic keelboat, Charlotte Dobson’s silver in the Radial, and Bryony Shaw’s gold on the RS-X board.

As for the men, it was two Northerners called Paul who looked most at home in the sunny South of France - Paul Goodison who cleaned up in the Laser, and Paul Brotherton in the 49er, aided and abetted by Mark Asquith in the front of the skiff.

Goodison went into the Medal Race just one point down on Spaniard Javier Hernandez. We just missed the start of the race but were surprised to see Hernandez sailing the wrong way, with his head in his hands. We thought he must have been OCS, although he could still have restarted. No, he’d just been yellow-flagged for his second Rule 42 offence of the regatta, the dreaded kinetics rule. Goodison’s coach Chris Gowers said Hernandez had been pinged for ooching his boat upright off the start line. “That was harsh,” said Chris, “you don’t normally see people get done for that.”

Chris added that the judging had been particularly lenient earlier in the week, to the point where sailors were taking liberties, and then on the last day there was a big clampdown. “The consistency of judging has been very poor here,” said Chris, “and you can quote me on that.” So I did. Sailors don’t mind harsh judgements provided they’re handed out on a fair and consistent basis, but clearly that wasn’t happening in Hyeres, an ISAF Grade 1 regatta.