Gearing up for the 49er Europeans
Written by Paul Brotherton | 04 July 2010
Well, we’re now in Sopot, Poland, on the eve of the 49er European Championships (5-10 July).
It’s the first regatta for Mark and I since winning World Cup gold in Hyeres just over two months ago, so we thought it would be an ideal time to update you on what we’ve been up to since then!
Claiming gold in Hyeres was a real confidence builder for the both of us, and validated our opinion that the training we’d done, and the value of our decision to base ourselves full time in Weymouth and train out of the sailing academy was really making us big gains.
Between us, Mark and I have got a lot of racing miles under our belts, and the performance profiling we’ve done – with the help of the performance management tool which Skandia Team GBR has developed with sponsor Accenture – has shown that our racing skills are pretty high, so with that in mind we opted to not to just go for more racing at the two subsequent World Cup events in Holland and Kiel. Instead we focussed on improving our sailing and set up of the boat with some targeted training and tuning in Weymouth.
The facilities the team have in Weymouth can’t be understated – they really are fantastic. The team’s performance unit is world class, the physio and strength and conditioning guys are always on hand to keep you fighting fit, there’s a workshop facility to sort the boats out in and it’s just such a great environment to be in. There are endless opportunities available there to make us better, which is why it makes such good sense to base ourselves in Weymouth and have that as our complete focus so that we can maximise all our training time to best effect.
Although we haven’t done any regattas since Hyeres, we have been training alongside the rest of the Skandia Team GBR 49er crews which, being such a strong squad, makes for some great training scenarios and keeps us sharp.
Aside from our training, I was privileged to give a talk to the Ullswater Race Development Programme a couple of weeks ago – a programme supported by Orange Mountain Bikes and Link Oil and Gas Professionals. It was great to be able to pass on techniques and set up knowledge of the 49er and 29er to such an enthusiastic group in such a fantastic setting, and I hope all who came along enjoyed it as much as I did.
We’ve also been pretty busy recently setting up our brand new boat, which has been possible through the generous contributions of Link Oil and Gas Professionals, Steve Hopper at EITS and Ian Cleaver of Highland Heritage. That boat is the one we’ll be racing here at the Europeans in Sopot, so it’ll be a great opportunity this week to assess her, and then we’ll choose between the new boat and the one we won the Hyeres regatta in as the boat we’ll then race in at the Skandia Sail for Gold World Cup regatta, which is our big focus event for this summer and is held on the Olympic waters in Weymouth next month.
We couldn’t be any more comfortable with how the year is progressing for us – we’re happy, confident and fit, and we’re looking forward to delivering a result we can be satisfied with at Sail for Gold.