Beijing with twins

We speak to double gold medallist Shirley Robertson about the latest challenge in her Olympic career

If you have been to the Olympics four times, won two gold medals and become Britain’s most successful female Olympian of all time then there must be very few genuine challenges left. Luckily Shirley Robertson - who has ticked all the above boxes - has always been one to find challenges for herself. Earlier this year she announced that she was doing an Olympic campaign for the fifth time, with a new crew and she is having twins as well. Challenge set then!

Robertson, who took the Gold medal in the Europe class at the Sydney Olympic Games and the Gold Medal in the Yngling at Athens, will once again be competing in the Yngling. She has handpicked a crew to sail with her, with the help of some friends and colleagues, and is fully preparing for what will be her first Olympics as a mother.

The selection of a middle person was a relatively easy decision for Robertson and was also one of the decisions that she made early on. Annie Lush was in Athens during the Olympics as a part of the team that went with Robertson as a tune-up boat. Robertson says that because of this she feels like she has known and sailed with Lush much longer than she actually has.

Robertson and Lush together form the core of the new team and Robertson obviously believes a great deal in Lush’s abilities. “I have really enjoyed sailing with her, she is a tremendous athlete and she is really keen to become a better sailor,” explains Robertson. “I think partly because she comes from another team sport [Lush rowed in the eight at Cambridge] she is very open and is a great team player. It is really refreshing that everything is discussed thoroughly.”

Obviously it is not just Lush’s athleticism and team spirit that makes her an ideal middle person for the boat. She is currently one of the top crews in the World and had a great year last year, winning the Match Racing World Championship with Sally Barkow and, as Robertson says, has in recent years grown in confidence to become a top end Olympic sailor.



Choosing a person for the bow position for the campaign was a slightly trickier affair. The position calls for a sailor who is not only physically fit and committed but also has a great all-round tactical awareness. In short: a young helm who is prepared to sit at the wet end of the boat. Robertson says that the difficulties in choosing a person for this position were many but one of the problems was her age. “The problem is; when you get a bit older you really loose touch with who is up and coming on the sailing scene. In the end we basically set up this sort of X Factor thing where we tried out quite a lot of different people,” she explains.

Though the team did not do much active advertising for the position, through a combination of suggestions from the RYA and a small piece of text on Robertson’s campaign website they received a staggering amount of applications. In the end this was whittled down to a list of 16 people with potential. These 16 were all taken out sailing for an on-the-water evaluation. “The calibre was extremely high and I was really impressed,” she says. “They were all very different, we had one round the world sailor and some people that had been really great youth sailors who had gone off to pursue careers and then were coming back to it and we had people who were currently coming out of the youth system.”

Both Robertson and Lush were joined by Andy Beadsworth, who has been involved in the campaign since the winter, to decide who the position of bow person would go to. Lucy Macgregor, the second youngest girl trialled and definitely from the ‘coming out of the youth system’ camp, was selected to fill the position. “Lucy instantly shone even in just the first day she was there. She was very natural in the boat and pretty unflappable. Also she was a very good 420 helm when she came to us and had done some match racing,” comments Robertson.

In early November they officially chose Macgregor as bow person and headed off to Palma for a hard winter training but did not stay there all the time. “We did some training with Sally Barkow in Miami which was a good break for us. We had done six weeks of focusing on Lucy and that can be quite hard week after week. So we went to Miami to train against Sally with the emphasis on equipment, which provided a good break for all of us.”

With the difficult crew selection details over with it was time for the team to get out on the water and get some regattas under their belts. Expecting to see them out on the Olympic circuit this year in the run up to Olympic selection in 2007 it came as a shock to most when on the third of March 2006 Robertson announced she was pregnant with twins. At this time Robertson made it very clear she was to carry on with the campaign and still intended on attending the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Robertson genuinely seems to believe that motherhood will not affect her campaign and has taken a number of steps to ensure the team remains a competitive unit. Most importantly Lush and Macgregor are to continue sailing the Yngling throughout the summer Olympic circuit with a series of ‘guest’ helms. We have already seen this plan in action.At the Princess Sofia Regatta the pair sailed with Greek 470 Gold medallist Sophie Bekatorou and most recently at the Hyeres Olympic Regatta with American Nancy Haberland. Alongside their Yngling campaign the girls will be running a full Etchells campaign with a series of top male helms, presumably campaign mentor Andy Beadsworth will be one of them.

Clearly Lush and Macgregor will be doing a lot of sailing over the summer but little of the team building stuff that is often so important will be taking place. “I was keen to do a bit this winter with the new team and I feel comfortable that we have done enough. We started late October but before that Annie and I were doing some work on the equipment so we have had four months together. I feel confident the girls are right, they have what it takes and we were beginning to come together as a team. I do not feel so worried leaving them for a few months now,” commented the obviously determined Robertson.

When Robertson says she is happy to leave Lush and Macgregor for a ‘few months’ she means exactly that. She says at the moment she is obviously out of the Regatta circuit but after the twins are born - they’re due in July - she is keen to get back on the water and expects to be sailing with the team by September. Her commitment to Olympic sailing is obvious as she goes on to tell us she would have liked to do more regattas and if she was only having one baby she might have but admits that with two babies on the way it will all be a bit harder.

It is obvious that Robertson has planned very carefully the logistics of this campaign but there remains the question mark over whether they as a team will have enough time on the water to stand a realistic shot at the Olympics. However, she is adamant that the time away from sailing will be very small. “My first regattas will be in 2007 but there are actually very few regattas on the Olympic circuit. When you look at it we would only have done Palma, Hyeres, SPA and the Worlds. One of the benefits I suppose of me not sailing this summer is the girls will do a lot more racing than we would have done had we been just sailing the Yngling.”

On the list of potential problems for Robertson’s team and people who will be taking advantage of her break will be her old crew of Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb. These two have formed a partnership with Victoria Rawlinson and have achieved some very impressive results to date. “They have been doing well but I think the reality is that I have been to a lot of Olympic Games and I would only want to go if I am in a position to bring something back.To do that you have to be able to beat everyone. In a way it adds a bit of an incentive, we really have to make this winter count because the trials are next year,” states Robertson.

Whether or not Robertson can juggle the pressures of motherhood and Olympic sailing remains to be seen. Not only does she face ever stronger global competition in the Yngling she will also be up against a significant threat in her old team mates. Certainly she has a strong team and a thoroughly planned campaign but it would seem for the first time in some years Robertson may be the underdog.