A milestone in our 2012 preparations
Written by Stephen Park | 25 September 2011
It’s been a hectic week, but an exciting one in our countdown and preparations towards 2012 as we officially selected the first members of the team that will fly the flag for us in Weymouth and Portland next year.
We’ve selected 11 of the potential 16 Olympic team sailors this week, and in them we have a good mix of experience and first time Olympians, which is a good place to be for us. It provides us with the opportunity of putting age and experience onto some of the less experienced heads, but equally for some new blood to come in to suggest new ideas to think about doing in a different way, and not just be satisfied with how we’ve done things in the past. Also, looking further down the track, it’s always good to have some turnover as that stands us in good stead for the next one or two Olympic cycles that are coming along, just to have a broader range of Olympians and of broader ages so we’re not relying on the same sailors all the time, who at some stage are going to move on and do something different.
Tuesday (20th September) saw the official team selection announcement, with a big press conference at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. All the main media outlets in the UK were present and it was a busy two days of press for many of the sailors. I think that a few of them were actually taken aback a little bit at the number of people that were sat in the press conference audience. I suppose that’s just a sign of what’s going to come as we get closer to a home Olympics which is still, in press terms, quite a long way away. As we get closer and closer through 2012 there’s no doubt that the media interest is going to continue to heighten and all the media that attended the announcement are already pointing out the expectation that is on sailing to deliver medals as part of Team GB, and that’s on each of those individual sailors in terms of doing their part to deliver medals for themselves, for the country, and also recognising the efforts of competing for the people that they’ve beaten to get that slot. There will be plenty of pressure for those sailors, the media interest in their selection has been a pretty great experience and there’s no doubt that the media and their media training going forward will be something that they’re considering in the run up to the Games in 2012 to give themselves the best opportunity of maximising on the experience.
It’s always a great milestone to get the sailors selected and effectively know who the people are who you’re going to be going to the Olympic Games with. More specifically it’s the first time you can actually be having conversations with the Olympic team about how we’re going to be working together, how we’re going to structure things and where we can really make some gains between now and 2012. Until that point, you’re always talking to potential Olympians and even when the team is as close as we are within Skandia Team GBR, always in the back of your mind you’re recognising that actually some of the people that you’re having those discussions with are the people you’re trying to beat in the selection trials process, so that makes things different. It’s great to be able to begin those conversations with those sailors who will be on the startline next year, and their coaches, and really start narrowing down the plans for the summer of 2012.
Certainly the hardest part of my job is having to make those phone calls to those people that have not made it to be part of the Olympic team. I’ve just got so much respect for those sailors, which is probably why it’s such a struggle for me to make the phone calls because I recognise the amount of effort, the amount of sacrifice that they put into their campaigns. So many of them are top sailors who, if they were sailing for any other nation, would be our main competitors. It’s at times like this I’m always disappointed that sailing doesn’t run a bit of a transfer market because I think we could do quite well out of it financially! On a more serious note, it’s always difficult telling somebody that the next chance they’ve got to go to the Olympic Games is going to be in five years’ time. It’s a long wait for someone who’s put in some much effort and so much application and who delivered such fantastic results through the course of the year, but were just not quite good enough for them to be the selected representative.
One of the things we’ve got to do with all the sailors who are left within the World Class Programme is try to ensure that we can maximise the potential of the team – both short term and long term. Everybody understands that we’ve no space on the team for carrying extra people so we’ve got to work with those sailors to establish whether they’re going to be active training partners for the people who are selected for 2012 – indeed for some of them It might be that it’s come to the end of the road for them with their Olympic careers and that they need to move on and do something different, so we’ll need to try and work with them in terms of helping them with their exit transitions into other aspects of the sport, or indeed they may choose a completely different career path. For the main part it’s about trying to support sailors re-focussing on 2016 and hopefully putting together a programme that allows them to recognise the positive experiences that can be gained from being a training partner and being an active supporter of the selected Olympian in preparation for 2012 that will leave them in a better position running into the next Olympic trials which are likely to be through the course of 2015.
There’s quite a lot of expectation around the top sports – sailing, cycling, rowing in particular – delivering the lion’s share of the medals and what’s really important from my perspective is that if Team GB is going to be fourth on the medal table or higher then ultimately it’s going to be about getting more medals from more sports, rather than just more medals from the same sports. Our top sports are actually already performing at an exceptionally high level and in those sports, including and specifically sailing, the competitive environment is just getting tougher and tougher. We can’t expect to maintain the level of medal-winning performances we’ve had. If the country as a whole is going to improve, that means we need to get better performances in more different sports.
Hopefully sailing will play its part in that and deliver a reasonable tranche of medals to help ensure that we do retain fourth place in the medal table.