Olympic preview - the 49er

49er sailor Andy Rice looks at the Olympic skiff and judges the top runners and riders going to Athens

Introduction

The 49er was a brand new class when it was selected for Olympic inclusion, after a trial of fast twin-trapeze boats at Lake Garda at the end of 1996. Whereas a class usually cannot be considered for inclusion until it has achieved International status, ISAF President Paul Henderson railroaded it through the ultra-conservative selection-by-committee process. It has since more than justified its status as one of the most thrilling and challenging boats in the Games.

The class pioneered the idea of emblazoning national flags on gennakers. Unfortunately quality control problems with the branded gennakers in Sydney meant they were only used for the first day of the regatta, but this time the idea has been properly tested. The sight of these ultra-fast skiffs flying their national flags at high speed across the water promises to be one of the most spectacular visions of the Games.

With an RYA Portsmouth Yardstick number of 747, the 49er is the fastest production monohull in the world and achieves speeds not far short of an 18-foot skiff. It is an inherently unstable design and left to its own devices will topple over very quickly. Measuring just short of 5m long (hence the name) and with a wingspan just short of 3m, and a hull weight of 94kg, it is a spectacular looking, space age design drawn by 18ft skiff legend Julian Bethwaite. Such was the instant popularity of the boat following its Olympic selection in 1996, almost 500 hulls were sold in the following year. As the market has become saturated, building of hulls has slowed to a steadier pace, with worldwide numbers now lying around the 900 mark.

In the early days, the strong skiff background of the Aussies saw them dominate early championships, with Chris Nicholson and Daniel Philips the early pacemakers in the fleet. Gradually, however, the European sailors caught up with the early boathandling advantage of the skiffies, and nowadays there is a much more international flavour to the top 10 of any Grade 1 event.


Technical

Like the Laser and the Mistral sailboards, the 49er is a strict manufacturer one-design, the only difference being that crews are required to bring their own boats and equipment. Originally it was conceived as a supplied equipment class, where teams could fly into the Games with their trapeze harnesses and wetsuits and go racing. This would have removed the heavy amount of gear testing and tweaking that some of the top teams apply to their equipment, knowing that they would be unable to carry these small but sometimes significant speed edges through to the Olympic Regatta.

Two builders from opposite ends of the earth - Dave Mackay in New Zealand and Dave Ovington in England - vie to produce the best hull within the strict tolerances of the class. They will both be well represented in the 19-strong fleet at the Games and choice of hull manufacturer will play an insignificant part in a team’s success.

There was a trend a couple of years back for crews to fair and even reshape the hull in a bid for extra performance. Not only was some of this work against the class rules, it appeared to make no significant difference. Fortunately for the class, an arms race was averted by the Spanish team’s ability to turn up to events with a boat delivered in its factory wrapping, and win regattas convincingly. Hull faring has since gone out of vogue.
As far as rigs go, some teams bend-test various masts until they find one with the characteristics they are looking for, while others have similar success just by taking the first one off the shelf. The mast is a two-piece section, consisting of an aluminium lower section and a whippy glassfibre top section to give the 49er rig its distinctive banana-shaped rig. Bethwaite designed the rig to respond to be dynamic, in other words to have good gust response with only the minimum of effort required from the crew. It is this characteristic, along with the boat’s 2.9m beam, that allows the crew to control such a large sail area, totalling 59.2sqm.

Up to the Sydney Games, North Sails provided the sails for the 49er, but a change of contract saw the sails being made by Pryde/McDiarmid from 2001 onwards. These are made from a heavier cloth than the Norths, but there has been little noticeable change in performance and longevity of the sails has been greatly improved. Consistency of production has also been excellent, so teams tend not to spend too much time sail testing. Far greater gains are to be made in learning how to get the best from the rig by just going sailing and spending quality time on the water. 49er sailors have one of the best sailing:boat bimbling ratios in Olympic sailing, and is one of the reasons why the sailors are so fanatical about the boat.

Getting the best out of the 49er is a bit of a black art. You could copy the fastest team’s rig settings and get nowhere with them. The lack of sail controls - mainsheet, jib sheet, vang and Cunningham are the primary ones - gives a deceptively simple appearance to the 49er. It is half dinghy, half windsurfer.

The off-the-boom mainsheeting system means the crew controls the mainsail trim, while the helm handles the jib trim upwind. This arrangement is another idea inherited from 18-foot skiff sailing, and helmsmen coming from more traditional dinghies found it quite a culture shock handing over control of the mainsail to the crew. It takes some getting used to, and requires an element of telepathic understanding between the two sailors to get the best out of the boat. In that respect it is the ultimate team boat and sailors rarely have immediate success in the class together.

Downwind, the crew hoists the enormous gennaker and controls the power while the helm continues to focus on steering. More often than not the 49er sails faster than the wind when flying the gennaker. With the crew ‘pulling rope’ all around the course, while the helm is focused on holding the stick at the back, the 49er makes for a very inequitable workload. The crew tends to be knackered at the end of three 30-minute races, while the helm may not even have broken sweat. Because of this, most teams have slightly larger crews than helms, but the prime rule of the class is that between the two of them they should not weigh more than 148kg combined.

Actually, the crew can weigh whatever they like, but the reason why 148kg is the magic number is because it marks the top end of the lightest band on the weight-equalisation system. This means the crew can sail with the wings pulled all the way out, accepting a 5kg penalty of lead weights taped to the transom bar.

Crew Weight Lead Corrector Weight Wing Width per side

- 148kg 5.0kg maximum
148 to < 160kg 2.5kg -50mm
> 160kg nil -100mm

Some teams have been known to dip 10kg the day before a weigh-in at the beginning of a regatta, by doing the usual keelboat racing tricks such as going on long, sweaty runs in their drysuits, avoiding drinking any fluids, and sitting in hot saunas until they have dropped under the 148kg threshold. This has been the accepted wisdom for some time, until the Spanish team of Iker Martinez and Xabier Fernandez won the Worlds in Athens earlier this year weighing in at a hefty 160kg and racing the regatta on minimum wings with no lead.

Others like Aussies Chris Nicholson and Gary Boyd think the whole obsession with weight is overblown and they just weigh in wherever they happen to be, in their case generally around 153kg. There is a call for the class to get rid of weight equalisation after these Games and they are waiting for ISAF’s agreement at the end of this year. The general feeling is that weight equalisation complicates things without really achieving any benefits.


The Contenders

Form has been notoriously hard to call in the 49er class and it generally requires a long series to separate the wheat from the chaff. For this reason, the 49er has the longest series in the Olympic regatta, with 16 races and two discards making up the event, compared with just 11 races and 1 discard in nearly every other class. The race duration is very short, with races taking an average of 25 to 30 minutes on two laps of a simple windward/leeward course. This puts a huge premium on good starting ability and excellent pace out of the blocks.

Two teams have dominated the last three years of racing on the international circuit and it would be a surprise if Gold does not go to either the team from Spain or Great Britain. Then again, the team from Finland shot from near-obscurity four years ago to win the Olympic Regatta in Sydney with two races to spare. Add the hugely unpredictable conditions of the Saronic Gulf into the equation, and there is a second tier of high achievers ready to topple the two favourites from their perch. It would not be unrealistic to suggest that anything up to 10 teams have a serious chance at Gold in Athens.

However, let’s start with the two pre-eminent teams in the fleet.


Medal Favourites



GBR - Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks

World ranked No.1 team from Great Britain, Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks, go into this regatta as the most consistent performers of recent months, having won the European Championships at Lake Garda just a month ago. They blitzed the World Championships in Cadiz a year ago, but finished runners-up to the Spanish representatives in Athens earlier this season. In fact they have yet to beat the Spanish at a World or European Championships but this is unlikely to register as more than an irrelevant statistic for this determined duo. Hiscocks has the bonus of having won a Silver in Athens four years ago crewing for Ian Barker. He and helmsman Chris Draper were an instant hit the moment they teamed up in early 2002, and they have stood on the podium of nearly every major event they have competed in since then. Preparation has been meticulous and they have utter faith and respect for each other’s abilities.




ESP - Iker Martinez and Xabier Fernandez

A different Spanish team - Santiago Lopez and Javier de la Plata - went to the Olympics as World Champions four years ago, and they finished in fourth place. That is unlikely to happen this time. It would be a shock for reigning World Champions Iker Martinez and Xabier Fernandez not to come away from Athens without some sort of metalware. Their greatest threat is likely to come from themselves, as both helm and crew have proven horribly injury prone. They lost nearly the whole of 2003 to injury and pulled out of the European Championships a month ago after a rumoured broken finger for Martinez.

But the Athens Worlds proved that they can bounce back from injury and still perform at the highest level. They are widely acknowledged to be the smoothest boathandlers and the most instinctive sailors in the fleet. They appear not to be analytical about their sailing, preferring the ‘Just Do It’ approach to racing, although with the 1980 Flying Dutchman Olympic Champion Alejandro Abascal as their coach they can afford to let him do the number crunching.


Medal Zoners

Below the top two is a rank of six teams who have all won medals at Olympic, World or European level. To this extent they are proven performers who all have the potential to reach the top of the podium.

GER – Marcus Baur and Max Groy

Marcus Baur and Max Groy are one of the fastest and most radical thinking teams in the fleet. Their decision to use a ball-and-socket trapeze arrangement in preference to the traditional hook and ring arrangement is one of the more obvious examples of their willingness to experiment. Baur won the Europeans twice and finished runner-up in the Worlds in the build-up to Sydney and was expected to do better than his fifth place at the Games. With his young crew Groy he shows all the ability to produce a medal in Athens. They were third at the Worlds earlier this year, behind the British and Spanish teams. Having trained extensively with the Brits and the Norwegians, the German team has an intimate knowledge of what makes the 49er tick, and they will not be lacking for pace in Athens.

NOR – Christoffer Sundby and Frode Bovim

Christoffer Sundby and Frode Bovim won the Olympic test regatta in Athens two years ago and have been scoring regular podium positions ever since. They finished runners-up to their British training partners at the Cadiz Worlds last September, but finished a disappointing sixth at the Worlds and Europeans this year. However they remain right in the medal frame, largely due to a burning self-belief and fiery commitment to succeeding in Athens.

DEN – Michael Hestbaek and Dennis Dengsoe Anderson

Michael Hestbaek and Dennis Dengsoe Anderson came through the most fierce selection trial to secure the Danish nomination to the 49er class. Like many of the top helmsmen in the fleet, Hestbaek is well into this 30s and not averse to using hair dye to maintain his reputation with the ladies. He also retains the burning desire of a younger man to win a medal in Athens. He has won the European Championships a couple of times but has generally relied on strong breeze to get results. Tall and muscular, Hestbaek and his shorter crew Anderson struggle to keep their weight down for the 49er, but a fourth place at the Worlds and a second at the Europeans suggest this team are hitting form at exactly the right time.



AUS – Chris Nicholson and Gary Boyd

Chris Nicholson achieved godlike status in the 49er by winning three consecutive World Championships in the late 1990s. But after a traumatic selection trial that dragged him through the Australian courts in the precious months leading up to the Games, a sixth place on home waters was scant reward for his talent. Having taken a break by competing in the Volvo Ocean Race, Nicholson has returned to the 49er with his old 18-foot skiff buddy Gary Boyd. Nicholson is by no means the dominant force that he was, but nor is he a spent force. He won the Pre-Olympic Regatta a year ago and was just a point behind Hestbaek in the Europeans, where the wily old Aussie finished third. What this team lack in raw pace they make up with guile and experience.


FIN – Thomas Johanson and Jukka Piirainen

Thomas Johanson shot from relative obscurity to win the Gold medal in Sydney four years ago, and by a comfortable margin. Johanson has been similarly low key in his build-up to Athens, this time sailing with a different crew Jukka Piirainen. But finishes in the top 10 of both this year’s Worlds and Europeans mark the Finnish team as dark horses. Johanson has a habit of winning when it matters, he also won the Laser World Championships a decade ago, and with the swirling winds and pressure cooker atmosphere of the Games, he has the ability to cause another upset.



USA – Tim Wadlow and Pete Spaulding

Tim Wadlow and Pete Spaulding have made steady progress up the fleet, showing a recent consistency that has rewarded them with No.3 in the ISAF World Rankings. They haven’t yet displayed the flair to take the podium of a major regatta, but a fifth at the World Championships and fourth at Hyeres and Spa Regattas suggest they will be ready to pounce on any mistakes. If they can keep their heads while others are losing theirs then they could repeat the Bronze notched up by the McKee brothers four years ago in Sydney.


Outside Hopes

There is another group of sailors who all show occasional potential to perform at the highest level, but haven’t shown sufficient consistency to be considered true medal contenders. Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Brazil, France and the Ukraine all fall into this bracket. The one team that shouldn’t be in this list is the Ukraine, but a dramatic loss of form in 2004 relegates Rodion Luka and George Leonchuk from serious consideration. This year they have failed to finish in the top 10 of the Worlds or Europeans. But past successes cannot rule them out entirely. They have twice finished in third place at the World Championships, in 2001 and 2003, and they won Hyeres Regatta last year. Unlike most sailors who come from a strong squad background, Luka and Leonchuk are the only Ukrainian team on the 49er circuit, and winning a medal would make them national heroes in a way that few other sailors could imagine.

To see a lot more photos of 49ers going at pace check out Luca Vallata's gallery from the recent Europeans.