Plenty of positives from Laser Worlds
Written by Nick Thompson | 25 November 2013
It’s fair to say that the Laser Worlds didn’t exactly work out as I had hoped.
It kind of almost got to the point near the end where there was nothing to lose – after an OCS and a protest disqualification early on, at the end I was just thinking I was really going to try and give it everything just to try and get that top eight or top ten position. Obviously the nature of when you sail a bit like that is that you’re going to have good ones and bad ones, so it was a bit of a disappointing week, and ended with me picking up a second yellow flag disqualification but there are still lots of positives to take away.
Generally I don’t tend to get many yellow flags and I certainly never get OCSs so I was pretty shocked to receive those, but it’s the nature of the game. There’s only a certain number of jury per race and you can only watch a few people so if you end up getting pinged sometimes it is just bad luck, but it’s very hard to know where the level’s at with the jury. One race you might be fine and if you do the same thing in the next race they’re not particularly happy with you. It can be difficult, but it is part of the game.
The positive to take away is that actually I think I sailed one of the best events I’ve ever sailed in terms of the races where I didn’t have letters on my score. The actual other races were pretty much all top fives and mainly top threes. I was certainly having good battles with Robert [Scheidt] and all the other guys so from that side of things I’m pretty pleased I’m back up to speed and although there are a few things to correct, I don’t think it’s anything major.
Robert’s pretty impressive. He’s never really put the Laser to bed – he’s always been training in it. He just genuinely loves sailing Lasers, he loves the physical side of it and he’s obviously very fit for his age. He’s got years and years of experience of sailing at the highest level, which really shows. In the last race he managed to win it to win the world title, so experience counts for a lot and it’s the same with Ben [Ainslie], Iain [Percy] and a lot of the other guys.
I’m having a little break now and then I head off to Rio in the new year for two weeks’ training and a little event and then on to the Miami World Cup. I’m looking forward to that.
I think speed and most of the other areas of my sailing are pretty much there, I don’t think there’s a huge amount to change so I’m very much looking forward to next year and to racing again and having another chance at the Worlds, which fortunately aren’t very far away!