Second attempt

Fresh from her second place at the Worlds, we speak to team GBR's top women's 470 sailor Christina Bassadone

When the 470 World Championships came to a close this weekend in San Francisco, Britain’s top female pairing Christina Bassadone and Saskia Clark ended up an impressive, but close second place on equal points with the overall winners Marcelien de Koning and Lobke Berkhout. TheDailySail spoke to a very jet lagged Bassadone about her result and the future of this promising partnership.

Bassadone attended the Athens Olympics with now ex-crew Katherine Hopson achieving a respectable seventh place. Since the Olympics the pairing have gone their separate ways and Bassadone is now sailing with Saskia Clark. “I actually wanted to sail with Saskia for a long time,” explains Bassadone “but she was teamed up with Josie (Gibson) so I just assumed that she was not available. Katherine (Hopson) did not want to carry on after the Olympics because she really wanted to do physiotherapy which she is now doing at university in Middlesboro. I knew that I definitely wanted to do another campaign so I gave Saskia a call pretty much as soon as I got back from Athens and we just got the ball rolling from there.”

When asked about her results at the World Championship Bassadone seems happy, but she is obviously a little disappointed that they were not first when the points were so close. “In the last race we just did not cover the Dutch girls enough. Had we done that we could have won the event. It is frustrating to be so close and not win, but we are really happy with our result.”

The conditions in San Francisco are notoriously windy, and Bassadone and Clark made every effort to prepare for this by spending lots of time in the gym trying to build as much strength and gain as much weight as possible. In the lead up to the event Bassadone put on an impressive five Kilograms and comments that “the diet begins tomorrow - mind you, we have said that every day since the end of the event.”

Preparation for the Worlds in San Francisco was not just limited to the gym. Bassadone and Clark made sure that they were regularly sailing in conditions that were as similar as possible to what was expected at the event. “Because San Francisco is so tidal we tried to mix our training between Warsash, Hayling and Chchester harbour. We also did a week on Lake Garda because that is a fairly one-sided track which was always going to be a key feature at this year’s Worlds.”

When training and also when racing Bassadone says that having routines for everything helps them stay on top of their nerves and also keep sailing fast - just going through a mental checklist is really important. As a team it helps them to significantly minimise mistakes especially in pre-start when things can get pretty hectic.

Bassadone says that their long term aims are to medal at all the major events in the run up to the 2008 Olympics and Medal in Qingdao, Beijing. “With the news of London hosting the 2012 Olympics I can’t help but have a bit of an eye on that as well. It is a long time away but it would be definitely be amazing to compete in your own country.”

In an attempt to try and realise their dream of a medal in Beijing, Bassadone and Clark have been spending as much time as possible on the water. “Saskia and I have been training full time since the beginning if June, I think that we have had all of about five days of not sailing in the past three months, so we are pretty full-on I guess.” This is a team that is clearly putting as much time and effort as possible into their sailing.

Women’s 470 sailing in Great Britain has for some years been a bit of a weakness so it is encouraging to see a British female pairing doing so well. There is now a small group of top class female 470 sailors pushing each other in Britain and though Bassadone and Clark are the top boat the others are fast catching up. Bassadone admits that “it is definitely a positive thing to have lots of competitive boats to work with and train with for us.” As many people say, you just can’t beat a competitive home fleet.

With some talk about trying to update the sport of sailing recently we wondered whether Bassadone likes the idea of a high performance boat, similar to the 49er being a women’s class? “I think that the 470 is an awesome boat and I think that it would be a real shame if it was removed from Olympic sailing,” she says. “Mind you the 49er’s are awesome to watch and they make for good viewing, so I think that if it helps raise the profile of the sport then it might be worth adding a more high performance 49er type class, but still keeping the 470 as well.”

While we are on the subject of the modernisation of sailing, we talk a little bit about the ‘grand finale’ concept that ISAF are using at the moment. Bassadone seems, for the most part, excited by the idea of trying the system out. “There were some events this year that were scheduled to have a ‘finale’ system but that ended up being cancelled for a variety of different reasons.” Although she has never competed in this type of finale before she again states that if it helps the modernisation of the sport then she would see it as a good thing. She does admit, however that it would be very nerve wracking to have the possibility of slipping out of a medal position when you have worked so hard through the week to get it.

Team Bassadone-Clark are currently RYA funded almost exclusively but are in the process of trying to find a major sponsor, they are keen to point out that the members of Itchenor Sailing Club have been very generous to them so far and this all helps a lot.