The long, hard grind - part 2

Today Laura Baldwin reveals how she went from nearly throwing in the towel to getting the ticket to go to Athens

This article follows on from part one yesterday...

Once again Baldwin stuck to her guns. She returned to the UK to take part in some more national ranking regattas and this time she put in a third and fourth place to move up to fourth overall in the national ranking table.

She moved south again to train over this time, setting herself up in Palma with a two bedroom apartment, her coachboat and two Europes, hoping to encourage some good sailors to come down and train with her. Sure enough the tactic worked and Dutch Europe sailor Merel Witteveen joined her, bringing with her leading Europe coach Sören Johnsen.

At this point Baldwin was still working outside of the RYA training program because of her poor results and had been excluded from a training camp in Weymouth and subsequently from joining the squad when they moved to Cadiz to prepare for the 2003 Worlds. In a way this may have motivated her and her time with Johnsen she feels was a turning point in her Europe training.

She returned to the UK in spring 2003 to take part in a national ranking event at Queen Mary...and she won it, her first ever win. She followed this up with sailing the Princess Sofia regatta in Palma and was the top British Europe sailor in that. But at Hyeres she was pipped to the post by Andrea Brewster who won the GBR slot to sail in the Athens pre-Olympics. Again she used this defeat to motivate herself. "It made me want to work harder so that I didn’t ever feel that way again. And the following weekend we had another national ranking event at Hayling Island and I won five races and discarded a second."



After finishing Spa as top Brit Baldwin returned to Palma where British coach Mark Littlejohn was working with Belgium sailor Min Dezillie and invited her to join in. Alongside Dezillie were two other Europe veterans Carolijn Brouwer and Trine Abrahamsen. "They were three of the top girls in the world at that stage. And I remember feeling so nervous before I went on the water the first day, really expecting to be completely blown away by them and I was very surprised to find that I actually had a speed advantage over them in most of the tuning runs. I had two weeks training with them and my confidence grew enormously. That was the biggest change of all, because before if I had found myself on the start line between those sailors I would have thought my race was already over, so inevitably it would be. But then I knew that if I found myself next to them on the start, if I got a good start, I could beat those girls."

At the Europeans that followed in Palma, Baldwin climbed another rung up the ladder finishing ninth (previously her best Europeans result was 29th). At this point she began to think seriously about her prospects of making it to Athens.

Having been sailing with a wingmast up until this point, Baldwin was provided with a mast from the RYA store cupboard that would be legal for the Olympics. With the new rig she finished second at the Nordic Championships in Jutland.

She then moved to Cadiz to spend six weeks training for the mass World Championships. "The training was great. I had got to grips with the sea breeze and knew the whole pattern of it. And of course the first day of the Worlds, the Levante blows. I’ve never seen this. I’ve never sailed with this mast and sail in wind before and suddenly I am learning all over again how to sail. I started off 64th after the first day - I had the worst day's sailing in my life and I was in tears and my coach really had to calm me down. The next day wasn’t much better and I only just scraped into the gold fleet after the first three days."

Fortunately this was followed by a layday, when she was able to sort herself out. "I actually thought it was over at that stage. I thought there was no chance of qualifying the country. All I was thinking then was that I’ve got to go out and prove that I am a good sailor. So part of the pressure had lifted from myself I guess. I went out and sailed my heart off and I was also learning to rig the boat better and as the week went on I got faster and more comfortable with it and had my best ever Gold Fleet series and pulled up to 26th."

There followed the most traumatic hours of her sailing career. Initially she thought her place was good enough to country qualify GBR for Athens. But on recounting she realised she had left out one sailor who she thought had previously qualified. Having phoned her father to tell him she's qualified team GBR in the Europe, she had to call him back and tell him she hadn't.

"Then I am packing my boat away really depressed and I get a call from my coach saying ‘the Portugese girl is in a protest’. I think she’s has been disqualified. And sure enough on the results, she’s been disqualified... Then it was pure relief."

However at this stage Baldwin had only qualified her country. She still had to qualify herself according to British Olympic Association guidelines. A week after Cadiz Baldwin received a phone call from Olympic Manager Stephen Park. "He said ‘congratulations, we are nominating you, which means you are the only one who can go, but you still need to prove yourself at one of three regattas next year.' There was never any grade I had to make. They were going to decide once they saw the entry list."

Over this last winter Baldwin resumed her training with Min Dezillie and German sailor Christiane Petzke. She also carried out a number of group training camps including one with Norway’s surefire Gold medal prospect Siren Sundby.

"On 6 January I got a letter saying ‘congratulations, you‘ve been selected for the Olympics’. And I think it was a bit of an accident, because the RYA were expecting the BOA [to come back and say you’ve still got to prove yourself. But they didn’t, they came back and said ‘you’re selected’."

Baldwin feels that although she was lucky this happened, even if the BOA had stipulated some results she had to achieve this year, her subsequent sixth place at Hyeres this year would have qualified her. “It was really good that they selected the team so early, because if it had been later to the event, it would have been too overwhelming. Whereas now I have had a long time for it to sink in. It's allowed me to focus and to test equipment for longer and not have the pressures of a trial still coming up.”

Over the winter David Howlett and Peter Bentley have been working on the technical side of her program, which she now has her own coach in Chris Gowers. “He’s a fantastic coach on the tactics and strategy. He’s very professional. After every training camp I get a video in the post and notes.”

In terms of her funding she is still on the most basic C-level, but has jumped World Class Potential and gone straight into World Class Performance. “My written goal at the beginning of 2003 was to make World Class Potential level in 2005 because at that stage I was looking at the 2008 Olympics,” she says.

A lot of her funding is still down to her parents, although since getting the ticket to Athens the sponsors have started called, although this is only for goods in kind – not cash. Among the sponsors are Gill clothing, Marlow ropes, Harken hardware, Science in Sport energy products, Silva who gave her a compass and a wind meter. Pride of place is her Jeep Grand Cherokee.

This year Baldwin nearly made it on to the podium at Hyeres and was 17th at the Worlds in windy conditions, which she admits are not her strongest suit. “We had one light wind day and I had a fourth and a second. The rest of the time it was pretty damn hard. But I didn’t capsize. That has been my biggest weakness in the past when it has been big wind. So I am getting there.”

In Athens the fickle conditions Baldwin feels are likely to play havoc with the sailors mentally. “Over the last three and a half every day was different and every single beat was different. It is very tricky. It is going to be about keeping your cool and anything can happen, just keep fighting until the very end, because you just don’t know. It will still be the one with the best skill and mental approach who will win.”

If Baldwin is to be in with a chance in Athens it will be in the lighter sea breeze. But she admits the experience of taking to the water for the first time in the Olympics will be ‘bloody scary’. Fortunately the team and RYA infrastructure to support her could not be better. “We are all pretty close as a team and we all get on well. And the set-up is fantastic. The fitness training facilities are great. The support staff structure is immense. They have thought about everything. There is nothing forgotten or left out. The amount of preparation for two weeks sailing is phenomenal, it is just mind blowing. It is fantastic to be a member of such an awesome team of talented sailors. Just being around them you learn what a winning attitude is and I’m learning things that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”