Making winning inevitable on our Road to Rio
Written by Stephen Park | 01 April 2013
Although in reality our Rio planning started quite some time ago, there's always an air of excitement and of new beginnings at the start of a new Olympic cycle.
This four year cycle, like any other, will bring its own set of unique challenges – a new Games venue to study and understand, new boat classes, new teams and new racing formats to get to grips with.
But with those challenges come a new set of opportunities. I’m firmly of the belief that the tougher the challenge, the stronger the British Sailing Team becomes. So as I prepare to lead the team towards my fifth Games in Rio – my fourth as team manager – I do so full of confidence in the talent and commitment that we have within our ranks, both on and off the water.
London was another fantastic Games for our sport, with our sailors having delivered five Olympic medals for the fourth Games in a row, and our Paralympic sailors stepping up to the plate after years of near misses to bring home medals in two out of three events, and with the third still up for debate in the hands of the Court of Arbitration for Sport at the end of this month.
By any measure, a 50% return on Olympic medal opportunities and 66% Paralympic return is pretty impressive, certainly hit our targets and proved that we have a justifiable place within UK Sport’s ‘big four’ in terms of the effective use of funding, and the ability to continually deliver multi medal-winning performances at the highest level.
We remain one of the most reliable British medal-winning sports, but I think it’s quite telling that, in spite of a great performance at the London Games, a number of sailors and myself were left feeling a little hollow. We had our ever greatest team going into the Games, but in spite of the medal success we had, we didn’t fully realise the potential we had.
There is a sense of unfinished business as we embark on this new Olympic cycle, and we’ve been working hard as a team – sailors, coaches and support staff together – to shape our vision for Rio and beyond, and really nail down the areas which are going to make the biggest performance difference this time around.
It’s been a galvanising and inspiring process, and lays out the roadmap to dominance on the world stage in the coming years and, ultimately, shaping what we hope will lead to inevitable success in Rio.
I’m proud to call upon a wealth of experience in driving this roadmap forward, with some familiar faces in recent Olympic gold medallists Andrew Simpson and Sarah Gosling (nee Webb) and Rob Andrews (2012 Sailing Competition Manager) having come on board as part of our revised Olympic Steering Group led by Chairman Jarrod Simpson. The OSG provides great support, guidance and in addition to RYA Performance Director John Derbyshire, provides a logical sounding board for me and my key management team.
This determination to succeed is well illustrated by results at the recent RS:X World Windsurfing Championships. The windsurfing classes were left in turmoil last year when their event was removed from the Olympic programme, only to be reinstated back in November. Nick Dempsey and Bryony Shaw, having turned their attentions to the new kiteboarding discipline, then had to dust off their RS:X boards and become race-fit for the Worlds in March. Dempsey wrote his name into the history books by becoming the first man to win two RS:X windsurfing world titles, and Shaw scored her first ever World Championship podium finish – a great start to the year, and with hopefully plenty more success to follow as we start our racing season in earnest this week.
There’s certainly a huge hunger for success amongst the team and I’m excited by what lies ahead – non-Olympians champing at the bit for their chance to shine in Rio, Olympians wanting to realise their potential and maybe get a brighter medal than they’ve done before.
We’ve a potent mix of youth and experience within the British Sailing Team as we start this road to Rio, and with the sailors the centre of everything we do, I can’t wait to see their potential unfold and lead this great team to further success in 2016.