The long, hard grind

In this interview GBR Europe sailor Laura Baldwin describes the unimaginable struggle of a budding Olympic sailor

While team GBR may be packed full of hardcore Olympic medal prospects such as Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy and Shirley Robertson, each well on the road to attaining ‘Olympic legend' status, it is worth remembering that those old hands are the exception to the rule. For the majority and particularly those on their first Olympic campaign the road to Athens has been an emotional roller coaster ride, a constant struggle for funding while fending off self-doubt and the attractive option of just throwing in the towel.

One particularly fine example of this within team GBR is Europe sailor Laura Baldwin who, remarkably, is going to Athens having sailed competitively for just five years.

Baldwin doesn't come from a sailing family and is a self-confessed late starter. She was first introduced to the sport aged 13 at a Try-A-Boat day when she was at school in Fordingbridge on the Hampshire-Dorset border. She admits that sailing during her teens was mostly a case of playing Swallows and Amazons on her Topper on Spinnaker Lake during the summer holidays.

Up until the age of 16 Baldwin's primary sport was figure skating but this came to a sudden end when the ice rink in Poole was closed to become a bingo hall forcing her to look for another hobby to occupy her time.

Her competitive enlightenment on the water came about when her parents took her on a holiday with Minorca Sailing as a treat for passing her A-levels. "I really wanted to be a sailing instructor and return the next summer and coach," says Baldwin of how she felt on her return from this. "So I did my RYA Level 5 at UKSA and my Instructor’s Certificate at Rockley Point. But already during that period I found myself being drawn more towards the racing side. By the end of the summer I just wanted to go race instead of instruct."

Leaving school, Baldwin enrolled on a Biology degree at Southampton University, the stronghold of student sailing in the UK. She bought a Laser Radial but her figure skater physique was too waif-like to sail it. Fortunately student life came to the rescue. "The pounds soon piled on what with the beer and the chicken burgers on the way home. So I pretty quickly became heavy enough to sail it."

Local knowledge on Spinnaker Lake helped get Baldwin on the university match racing team, albeit in the ladies 3rd team, but due to her keenness she was made captain.

At the end of her first year Baldwin was fantasizing about being Ladies team racing captain but had also discovered fleet racing National championships. "I tried to sail as many events as I could, so I did the Topper and Laser and Solo Nationals, Poole Week and lots of races and lots of very deep finishes! I think I was 96th in the Laser Radial Nationals - I threw myself right in the deep end. My first event ever away from Spinnaker Lake was the Topper Nationals, the first time on the sea and the first time against more than four boats. And it was in Llandudo in north Wales. So it was quite an adventure."

At this stage she had befriended top Laser sailor Dan Holman and Baldwin says she used to follow Holman and his training cronies around on the water off Stokes Bay in her Radial watching their technique. Her sailing during the summer had sufficiently improved her so that when she returned for her second year at university she won her place on the ladies first team for team racing. However the wind of change was blowing once again – while fleet racing during the summer she had picked up the bug for this form of the sport.

Early into her second year at Southampton University Baldwin decided to bail and take a gap year. "I figured if I ever wanted a chance to catch up with my peers I was going to have to go full time," she says. She wanted to take part in international events such as the Laser Radial Europa Cup and came across an Irish company called Sail Coach based in south of France, run by former Laser coach Trevor Millar, and signed up with them. "They tour the international circuit with a group of international Laser sailors. It’s really for countries which don’t have a big federation. So there was Israel, Turkey, Antigua, Iceland, Seychelles - a real mixture of cultures - which was fantastic.”

Baldwin trailed around Europe with Sail Coach’s group of eight Laser Standards and six Laser Radials in a big van with the team, the coaches and the coach boats. She took part in Laser Radial events in Italy, France, Germany and Denmark a tour that culminated in the class’ Worlds in Turkey, where she finished a creditable 13th.

Returning to the Sail Coach base the following winter for more training Baldwin was sat down by Trevor Millar and their head coach John Lasenby. "They said they thought I had talent and that I should sail full time and go for the Olympics in 2004. To which I had mixed emotions. First of all - really excited but then when I thought about it more and I had this huge pain of what I would have to sacrifice: my degree, my friends, being ladies’ captain, all the match racing and team racing and Laser sailing that I’d planned, I’d just meet this new guy, so I thought I’d lose him, my room in my house with my flat mates, that I really loved. But I did it...

"Then I went back and told my dad and he took some persuading. He wasn’t mad keen to put it mildly. 'No, finish your degree first.' So I had to explain to him, that if I finished my degree I would stand absolutely no chance and I had to go full time now, because I had a least three or four years to catch up on my peers."

At this point the Olympics still seemed a romantic notion - sporting fame and glory, international travel, fit blokes...a medal. The reality was quickly hammered home. Baldwin bought a Europe and was invited to a squad camp in Weymouth, where she was roundly last in a group of 12 budding Shirley Robertsons.

She had teamed up with a Canadian, the only other girl on the Sail Coach tour whose parents were Polish and had managed to enlist the help for three months of a leading former Polish Olympic coach.

"That was full on. It was up at 6am to go running, hours and hours on the water, no days off, we weren’t allowed to rest. We worked really really hard which was great, because we both wanted to be pushed, but it wasn't a pleasant experience to be honest. In the end we were both so tired we couldn’t think and we were in tears the whole time. I think you have to have a balance between working hard and resting. So by the time that finished I was completely broken, but it did stand me in good stead and made me realise how much work was needed straight away."

She says this in retrospect. At the time the experience had depressed her so greatly she had considered giving up. "I took some time off and went off to do a Laser Radial qualifying regatta. And I was getting top 10 results. Before I was in the 30s and 40s in each race and I thought ‘wow, I have improved and learned a lot’. So then we had some National Ranking events in the Europe and I jumped from being way off the National ranking list up to eighth by the end of the season with a fourth and a sixth in the last two regattas."



These results instilled some much needed confidence and Baldwin says she thought 'if I can achieve this in one year - what can I do in two?'

Over the winter of 2001 she got some good coaching from Mark Littlejohn who had worked with Shirley Robertson and educated her about the technical side of sailing, while Pete Conway, team GBR's Tornado coach in Sydney, taught her tactics and meteorology.

Baldwin then returned to the Sail Coach base and recruited John Emmett to be her training partner for six weeks. Emmett also was put in charge of her fitness regime requiring her to beef up a further six kilos from 62 to 68kg. "So it was hardcore weight training and loads of protein and shakes and bars. And you’re on an island so there was no chance of ruining your diet. But I completely changed shape over that time and I increased my weight to 66.6kg which meant I couldn’t fit into any of my clothes anymore..."

2002 was not a good year for Baldwin. Her sponsor went bust and her parents who had been helping support her ran into financial trouble. "So that was difficult time. I managed to keep going by cancelling my coach and renting out my coach boat and my spare Europe at regattas and living in the back of the Transit van. I had my Tescos 8p cans of baked beans and cooked in the back with a little gas stove. And I stayed in Europe - I couldn’t afford the ferry home.”

The lowest point occurred during the Europeans in Belgium. "It rained for three weeks solid, everything was wet and the lights stopped working in the van and the MiniDisc stopped working and I was completely without entertainment and complete alone and it was really depressing and all I wanted to do was go home, but I had to see out the competition. I did quite well in the Open Week and I managed to qualify, because I hadn’t pre-qualified because there were still too many good girls in England at this stage. And then I was too over keen and I got two OCSes and that was pretty much the end of it and I ended up in the silver fleet."

The story was much the same at the Worlds in Canada. Again she hadn't pre-qualified and did well in the open week prior to the Worlds. "In the first race of the World Championships I sheeted the boom onto the deck off the start and the eye on my boom for my mainsheet pops out and I am without mainsheet. Dire."

Find out how Laura picked herself up and made it to the Games tomorrow...