Dominating the OCR

We speak to Joe Glanfield who is, with helm Nick Rogers, 27 points ahead at the Rolex Miami OCR

Athens 470 Silver Medallists, Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield, were due to pick up their 470 campaign at the start of the European Olympic circuit in March last year. Rogers, though, came off his mountain bike just before the Princess Sofia Trophy and badly broke his wrist. This injury resulted in the pair missing much of the summer racing last year, though they did make it back for the important Olympic Test event in Qingdao, China and their World Championships in Rizhao a little way down the coast.

After a long hard winter spent training Rogers and Glanfield are now back and are currently obliterating the competition at the Rolex Miami OCR with a 27 point gap between them and second place. Yesterday they added a first and a second to their impressive score-line. “Today was good, it was a bit different from the last few days,” explained Glanfield of the conditions when we spoke to him last night. "We have had some really light winds and then today was a bit windier. A big front came in and the wind swung so it was coming off the land, which made it really shifty and quite windy. In general terms though it is really warm, the water is warm and we have had wind pretty much every day."

Glanfield is, characteristically, subdued about their current position - way out in front of the fleet. “We have managed to stretch out our lead a bit which is good because we have still got probably three races tomorrow and the medal race after that. It will be good if we can keep a few points between us and the rest of the fleet,” he comments. “Essentially we are racing well at the moment which is encouraging because we did miss a lot of last year,” says Glanfield about as close to self congratulation as he gets.



Leading the OCR at this stage represents a significant achievement, especially in this vital year where competition is so strong. "There are a lot of boats out here," Glanfield explains. "I know the other classes have said there is good competition and in the 470 there is literally no-one missing from the top ten or top 15 in the world. On that level it has been a really good event to do."

Although the pair seem to be destroying the competition Glanfield feels they are still very rusty from their rather long break from sailing last summer. "Before this event we did the North Americans here, we were still a little bit off our game for those [the pair finished fifth]. With that week sailing and a week after of training we now feel a lot more back together for this regatta. We feel like we are back on track in terms of being less rusty but more importantly having more race practice,” he explains.

Although they feel a little rusty out on the water the pair does not feel there is any one thing they need to work on specifically. "I think there are a few of the basic boat handling manoeuvres that are not as slick as we would like," Glanfield says. He adds that in each condition there are just a handful of small things they can improve which hopefully would add up to a few more points gained in the next regatta.

The team still has time to iron out some of the problems in their performance as the next major event for them, the Princess Sofia Regatta, does not begin until 30 March. "We will be doing a lot of training after this event to ensure we get better. Hopefully all the training we will be doing in Palma after Miami will give us the opportunity to work at the things that we feel we have not been good enough at here," explains Glanfield.

Following this event the pair will head out to Palma and their winter training base to work on some of the boat handling issues they have identified as problems. Glanfield says these are important to fix before the year really gets going. "Really this marks the big build-up to the summer and the summer this year is critical in terms of getting to the Olympics and in terms of our preparation for the Olympics. From now on it is quite a full on programme. We have a good programme of training and international events which should see us improve even more". Really though, although the pair are thinking about the 2008 Olympic competition it is a long road to get there. Glanfield tells us although it features in their planning, this summer, and the ISAF World Sailing Championships are the important things to focus on. He says after the Olympic selection is over then they can begin to think properly about the games.

We wish Rogers and Glanfield good luck for the rest of the competition but it suddenly occurs to us this does not seem to be something needed by the pair. “Luck is always something we need,” says Glanfield.