Gunning for gold at the Laser Worlds!
Written by Nick Thompson | 12 November 2013
Not long now until the start of the Laser Worlds - given that I’ve medalled at the last three World Championships I’ve competed at, I’m at least hoping to get a medal as my goal again this year.
To be honest, having never actually managed to win a Worlds, that is my goal – very much I’m looking to really try and win this one.
It’s going to be a tough year because most of the guys have been pretty much full-time since the Games – I don’t think many of the guys took time off, and we’ve got some faces in the class again like Robert Scheidt and a few others who are back. I don’t think it’s going to be an easy one, but to win is definitely the goal.
The usual post-Games lull certainly hasn’t happened in our class. Traditionally everyone expects the year after the Games to be one of the ‘easy’ ones, but it certainly hasn’t been the case with pretty much everyone turning up to the events fired up and ready, and no one’s really had a long break. It’s been a tough year, and it’s going to be a tough event.
I went into the first event of the year in Palma having done very little Laser sailing. I’d been doing other types of sailing to try and work on some of those other skills. I didn’t have the best start to the year with a few illnesses and a few niggles, but to be fair you’ve just got to put the time in in the boat. If you take a break you can’t come back and expect to be immediately up to speed. I was making the right decisions a few times around the racetrack but just didn’t have the speed to back up those decisions.
As we’ve got towards the end of the season, the speed’s come back and everything’s starting to click back into place. It wasn’t a huge worry at the start of the season, just because the Worlds are so late and the Europeans were so late as well, so there was time to work on things. That was something we planned a long time ago, we knew the dates quite early on. I’ve been full-time campaigning in the Laser for quite a while and have never really had a solid break I guess to take a step back and realise ‘do I really want to do this’, ‘is this really what I want’ and that is very much the case. I took the break and came back wanting it more than ever because you appreciate how much you love it and how much you miss it when you’re not doing it.
I’ve spent a bit of time out in Oman before, before this event and helping the Oman Sail programme when it was setting up so I’ve been out there a few times working with those guys. The place pretty much always seems to have the same condition most days. It’s incredibly hot and the water’s very hot, sort of 30 degrees and the outside air temperature is around 40 degrees most of the time so it’s absolutely baking! That’s really going to throw something different into the mix that none of us have really had to contend with at a major championship before – having to stay hydrated and stay out of the sun as much as possible, which is obviously pretty tough to do when you’re out on the water.
In terms of the sailing conditions I’m expecting (and there’s always the saying that ‘it’s never normally like this here!) about six to 12 knots most days and pretty choppy so it’s reasonably physical upwind for that light wind strength. It’s a challenging condition. The other factor that plays into it as well is that there are very few markers for change. Normally when we’re sailing at venues there’s a lot of land around or there are features like clouds and things to look around for, but there it’s just desert and most of the time where we’re sailing the desert doesn’t come round the side of the racetrack, so there aren’t really any transits or visual cues. Generally the sea breeze just kind of comes in, there’s no real indication that it’s coming! It’s a different venue to put it mildly!
Through the season so far we’ve had so many different people who’ve been on form that it’s hard to pinpoint rivals. You can’t bet against someone like Robert Scheidt – he’s won so many Worlds he obviously knows how to do that – but there are also guys like Tonci [Stipanovic] who’s been sailing very, very well recently winning the Europeans and the Qingdao World Cup, and you’ve got the Swedish guy Jesper [Stalheim] who’s been sailing well and the Dutch who’ve also been sailing well. You could go down every country pretty much and say there are guys who are capable of doing well on their day. I‘m certainly going to try and be up there with them!
I’ve done a fair bit of training together with the British Sailing Team’s Podium Potential guys over the summer, and it’s been really great, although I do feel like one of the old guys when I’m among them!
In the same way as when I came into the Laser and I had people like Paul [Goodison] to sail against and before that Mark Howard, having sailed together we can learn off of each other and it helped me get back to speed, and it’s helped them in certain ways as well. There’s been a huge improvement from those younger guys which has been great to see. Alex [Mills Barton] has performed at quite a few events, Martin [Evans] had a good result at the Europeans as well so they’re certainly going to be ones to watch and hopefully they can have a good Worlds as well.
I’m pretty confident in the stuff that we’ve been working on this year and I honestly feel like I’ve made big improvements in areas that before were a little bit of a weakness for me. There are numerous areas where I’m sure the people who sail against me would know have been my weaknesses but those are the things that I’ve really tried to nail down in the last year, and I think I’ve made huge gains there. Hopefully if everything clicks into place I really believe I’ve got a good chance.
Everyone’s going to take the Worlds seriously every year. It’s very hard for anyone to say that it isn’t really a goal event for them. For me personally it’s huge just because it’s a chance of winning the Worlds. It’s important in terms of funding, but really for me it’s about trying to nail that World title.
To start doing that now sets down a huge marker for future in terms of personal confidence and also showing the others that you’re capable of doing it. It gives you a little extra kick for the next few years gearing up to the Games!
The Laser World Championships will take place at the Al-Massanah Sports City, Oman, from 17-23 November.