Back to work
Written by Dylan Fletcher | 21 April 2014
Hyeres has happy memories for Alain and I, as this is where we won our first ever World Cup gold medal last year.
It was also only the second place we ever competed in the 49er together back in 2007, and we were 13th, a really positive, encouraging result in our first year. It feels pretty exciting to be back here again.
People often talk about the importance of winning your first gold medal, and looking back I do think achieving that early last year did help us kick on for the rest of the season. After the disappointment of missing out on London 2012, we know what we want to achieve in this cycle and that included getting amongst the medals early on.
We started this season on the podium in Palma and, although we didn’t finish where we wanted to, given that we made the week difficult for ourselves at times, to still come away with a medal showed good character. Sailing out on one day we ran into a reef and smashed our favourite centreboard, and on the same day Alain was pretty ill and hadn’t been able to eat for 24 hours so we had our adversities to overcome!
We still managed to put into practice, and see gains, from a lot of the things we have been working on this winter, and we are looking forward to taking that on out here.
This is also the first time London 2012 champions, Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen, will compete in 2014. They were involved in Artemis and the America’s Cup last year, and only did the 49er Worlds, so it will be good to see how we go against them.
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