I used to think I knew a lot about sailing, but that was before I met Penny Clark and Saskia Clark, two of Britain’s best dinghy sailors, on a rainy day off the coast of Mallorca.
In the grey light of morning, it looked as if my mission – to understand what makes a successful competitive sailor – was going to be, well, plain sailing.
There they were, the two Clarks (not related) honing their skills in the little white cockleshell of the 470 dinghy in the bay of L’Arenal. Penny steers, Saskia manages the jib. It cannot be that complicated.
But it is. Preparing to board, first as crew, then as helmsman, I was immediately baffled by the spaghetti junction of brightly coloured and very complicated looking ropes in the cockpit.
The 470, it turns out, is a “technical” boat, and I am a simple cruising sailor. You can adjust the mast and the spreaders (the crosstrees) as well as the sails and the centreboard. As for the ropes, the thin blue one is the barber hauler, blue-and-purple is the spinnaker halyard, black is the kicker and another blue is the cunningham. And that’s only a few. Let’s just say they are for tightening, loosening and pulling things up, down and sideways.
Penny, a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy who has been granted leave until the Olympics for the pair’s 470 medal campaign, took pity, allowing me to ignore most of the spaghetti. Instead I focused on basic manoeuvres with the jib and the spinnaker.
Saskia, with a decade of racing experience in this type of boat, was equally sympathetic when I took the helm. Neither laughed when the bulky combination of wetsuit, lifejacket and trapeze harness left me stuck under the boom, although the wasted seconds would have lost us a race.
Even in early 2009, this training camp for the Skandia-sponsored UK team is all about the 2012 Olympics. Britain won four golds, a silver and a bronze at the Beijing Games and has been the most successful sailing nation at each of the past three Olympics.
The team has no intention of stopping there. It was bad luck for sun-lovers, but I could not help thinking that the cold drizzle in Mallorca was an ideal introduction to a typical summer’s day on home waters in Weymouth, where the 2012 races will be run.
“The only thing that really matters in sailing is the Olympics,” said Saskia, who narrowly missed the medals table with a sixth place in Beijing along with her previous 470 partner Christina Bassadone. “Everything until London in 2012 is a practice. Your whole life revolves around this one week in August in four years’ time.”
Penny was equally ruthless, likening the pair’s medal bid to a military campaign. “A lot of the qualities you need to campaign are good qualities for a naval officer as well,” she said briskly.
Under Stephen “Sparky” Park, the team manager, the British have proved the worth of such a disciplined approach. Their professionalism is the envy of other countries. Sailors are advised not only by their coaches but also by a psychologist, a meteorologist, a nutritionist, a physical training expert and two physiotherapists.
There is even a “performance analyst”, who lurks in a Mercedes van equipped with computers. He helps to identify techniques for the tiny speed changes that make the difference between victory and defeat. Precisely what is being analysed remains a secret. “If I told you, I would have to kill you,” smiles one of the coaches.
Yet this formidable array of specialists is not enough to ensure a haul of gold medals. And the two Clarks will not be the only Olympic sailors who are physically fit and tactically expert.
To win, then, you need something extra. You need a quality known as “the Ainslie factor”, after Ben Ainslie, who has won gold in the single-handed Finn dinghy in three consecutive Olympics. This is where the psychology comes in. And this is why sailing excites such passion among its adherents.
Swimmers and sprinters have a good idea of who is going to win a race because it will usually be the person with the fastest time. Michael Phelps’ eight gold medals in Beijing were impressive, but not surprising. Sailing is rarely like that: the wind shifts; the tide changes; there is another boat in your way at the start line; every now and then, the best come last.
Months of practice, unruffled decision-making despite intense stress, and consistent performance throughout a gruelling regatta are all essential. “In running or swimming, you do what it says on the tin,” says Ben Schell, lead psychologist. “In sailing, sometimes you will have to deal with adversity.” Mental toughness, he says, is the key to success.
For Sparky the manager, a race is an unpredictable puzzle that the sailor must solve alone. “Ultimately it comes down to individuals who are able to sift through all the noise and pick out the pieces of the jigsaw that are going to be crucial for success today,” he says. “And those pieces are going to be different tomorrow.”
Penny and Saskia have evidently absorbed all the messages about physical and mental fitness. They will have to maintain their ideal bodyweight for racing and must be prepared at any moment for a drug test.
The two plan to train together for up to 12 hours a day, three weeks a month and nine months a year until the Olympics, and of course win selection over the heads of their younger British team-mates before beating the rest. Winning gold requires dedication.
“You’ve got to be able to turn up at the start line and have complete confidence in yourself and your decisions,” said Penny in the cafeteria of the local yacht club, as they prepared to compete in the Princess Sofia regatta. “At this stage in the cycle, everyone’s desperate to topple us. Hopefully by Weymouth their attitude will be, ‘Let’s settle for silver.’”
Penny and Saskia played down their chances in the regatta because they had been training together for only a few weeks. Yet they went on to win two of the 10 races and finished a creditable fifth overall – beating the other Britons.
I was not surprised by their performance. But what of mine? Before parting, I humbly enquired how I had sailed during my brief foray on the water. “You need a bit more attention to detail,” Saskia responded. I think it was a polite way of saying, “You were rubbish, but at least you didn’t capsize.”
Victor Mallet is the FT’s Madrid bureau chief
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