The sports science of Olympic sailing

Toby Heppell speaks to the RYA's Pete Cunningham about the science behind the scenes

All sailors are aware that a little effort in the gym can reap rewards on the race course - be it being able to hike harder, pull harder, last longer or be the optimum weight. It is the domain of the Olympic sailor where this area of the sport is being taken to new heights of professionalism. The RYA have long been involved in the sports science of sailing and we spoke to Pete Cunningham, their Senior Sports Science Officer, about current programmes being implemented for Olympic and near-Olympic level sailors.

Cunningham is no stranger to the world of graphs, blood tests, diet and Gold medals, having been involved in this area of the sport for 12 years. In fact his PhD was on the physiological demands of single handed dinghy sailing. While the technology is fairly generic across different countries Cunningham believes that the UK has a broader understanding of the data produced. “I would say we have a pretty good grip on how fit you need to be; whether it is aerobic fitness, whether it is strength, or whether it is power development” he says.

Cunningham is part of a three physiologist team, while he concentrates on the Olympic Performance Squad his colleagues look after the broader Olympic Development Squad. In addition to this they draw on the expertise of strength and conditioning coaches and nutritionists to what he believes is, in sports science terms, as professional as any other sport.

Central to what the sports science team have been doing is the collection and interpretation of heart traces and corresponding blood samples. This has enabled them to identify what is happening to the sailor on the water and the best way to improve the performance of the sailor based on the data.

One of the most important aspects of this is the different demands that different classes put on the sailors and also the subtle difference between a helm and a crew. “By combining heart rate and blood samples it gives us an indication of how hard they are working,” says Cunningham. “We are trying to look at the physiological demands on different classes so for example if you look at the graphs for the 470 you can see a difference between the crew and the helm. For example the 470 helm works quite hard upwind whilst the crew has a relative rest and then look at the heart rate traces as they go round the windward mark - the crew is working hard downwind whilst the helm has a relative rest..”

The blue band represents downwind sailing


Cunningham says that this is fairly typical in a single trapeze boat, with the crew pumping on the kite their heart rate soars. This is all the more important on a yellow flag day (pumping is unlimited) when they are pumping the kite as hard as they can and as frequently as they can. In contrast the helm is playing a pretty unloaded mainsail.

On a more subtle note is the difference in the demands on a singlehanded sailor. Cunningham picks out the Laser trace (below): “In the Laser, a lightweight boat, the sailor has a pretty high heart rate upwind because they are always trying to move and push the boat through the waves. They do lots of bending from around the hip joint, lots of rotation, lots of flexing and lots of extension. If you watch an elite Laser sailor they are never still in the boat they are forever trying to move.”

In comparison, says Cunningham, is the Finn sailor whose heart rate upwind is relatively or significantly lower than the Laser sailor - because the Finn is a bigger heavier boat a similar amount of body movement to the Laser doesn’t really make you go a lot quicker upwind. The difference is downwind where the Finn sailor obviously works really hard with one to one pumping on a fully loaded mainsail.





This data is backed up on occasion with blood test sampling with an aim of identify lactate production, the by product of muscle exercise and exertion. “Obviously in sailing it is very hard as an observer to know exactly what is going on,” explains Cunningham. “It is difficult to identify how hard they are working so if you have got some hard data it makes us able to see what is going on much better. We normally try and combine the heart rate traces with some blood samples so we can look at lactate production, and that gives you a pretty good view into what fuel they are using and how hard they are working.”

All of this produces a guide to what is required from a physiological standpoint for each class and for the individual sailors.

“We try to get elite sailors in for regular testing and we have certain criteria that we expect them to meet depending on the class they sail, and what we think is relevant for them to be a ‘gold standard performer’ as we would call it,” says Cunningham. “That might relate to upper body strength, it might relate to leg strength it might be endurance, aerobic fitness, anaerobic fitness or body weight. I think we have about 15 different criteria and that varies from class to class and even position to position.”

If there is an easy physical ride in Olympic sailing this would be helming a 49er or a Tornado it appears. In Cunningham’s words the crews have a “pretty hard life physically” in contrast to the helms “have a bit of a cruise”. As a result the crew and helm have different ‘gold standard’ criteria.

The RYA have been keen to introduce a heart rate monitoring ethos with all their sailors – enabling them to fully understand what makes their bodies tick. On a basic level this focuses on sailors being able to monitor their weight, based on diet and calorie burning. “We are pretty keen that they record their own heart rate for everything that they do,” says Cunningham, although he could not be drawn on what activity outside sailing burned the most calories. “All the RYA sailors, all the performance squad, all the performance sailors and development sailors all have their own heart rate monitors that are capable of producing these curves.”

Weight management, says Cunningham is one of the key areas that they use this data for: “Half the sailors I work with are either trying to put body weight on or loose body weight. I would say for Olympic sailing it is in terms of fitness a major area, if you are 84 kilos sailing a Laser you are too heavy it is as simple as that.

“For example if you are trying to gain weight you get a scenario like we had with Ben Ainslie running up to the Olympics where he would go sailing for four or five hours in Athens and during that sort of period he would burn around 3000 calories. Ben’s big scenario was trying to get heavy enough to sail the Finn. If you are burning that many calories a day it is obviously hard to get those calories back.”

Cunningham and his team have moved things on already from Athens and are now starting to pick out specific muscle activity whilst sailing, but he admits that they are always limited because of the non-laboratory environment that sailing takes place in.

Muscle activity is logged with an electro miograph (EMG), Cunningham explains: “A thing called an EMG enables you to look at the electrical impulse triggering the muscles, basically the bigger the impulse the bigger the muscular contraction. We are planning on doing some of that over the next few years particularly with the hiking sailors so we can get some idea of what percentage of maximum the muscles are working at. So we are always trying to push things on.”

In addition to this is the continually changing landscape of top level sailing where new classes come along, rules change and the demands on the sailor change too. Cunningham pulls out the new RSX Olympic windsurfer class as one that has completely altered the demands on an Olympic windsurfer and the sports science that goes with it.

“There are more and more yellow flag races in some of the dinghy classes where there is free pumping,” he continues. “These things change the demands on sailors and we are always having to adapt to keep up with this ever changing situation.”

In a sport visually dominated by technology on the equipment side, it is often overlooked at just what level of sophistication is now being applied to the individual athelete’s physiology. That run around the block first thing in the morning, would seem to be no longer good enough to compete at the highest level.