Busy busy

We talk to the Finish sailor with a Yngling campaign, a 49er campaign, a match racing campaign and who is studying medicine at university

Last Sunday there was upheaval at the final of the JP Morgan Asset Management Women’s Match Racing Final, when ISAF World number one match racer Claire LeRoy was ousted from the title spot by a young Finnish competitor.

Over the last few years Silja Lehtinen, 21, has been slowly building up a reputation as one of the top sailors of her generation achieving success in both fleet racing circles and on the match racing scene. Like many top sailors Lehtinen comes from a sailing family. Her father sailed a multitude of different dinghies and even competed in the Whitbread Round the World Race aboard one of the many Finnish entries in the 1982 race, while her stepmother Vivi Fleming-Lehtinen also races and was on the bow for Silja this weekend at Queen Mary Sailing Club, on the outskirts of London.

Lehtinen has effectively sailed all her life. The first time she was on a boat, she says, was at six months old when she and her family sailed from Holland to England where her father was to compete. Still at a young age they cruised through the Finnish arphipelago among other places, though racing did not come until a little later. “I started racing at about nine in [Optimists],” Lehtinen explains. Straight after sailing Optimists, at about the age of 15 she moved onto the 29er, though this was interrupted by a year living in California on a high school exchange programme. In the USA Lehtinen had the opportunity to sail a wide variety of different classes and also tried her hand at team racing.



Upon her return to her home in Helsinki Lehtinen began to seriously campaign the 29er with her crew Silja Kanerva. The decision to sail the 29er was quite obvious to her, as Lehtinen explains; “My dad was quite active in pushing the 29er -he did not think the 470 would be as much fun. There was also the 49er class and the Finns had just won the Olympics in Sydney. They have a really good summer circuit with the 29er in Finland, so it was more exciting to go with the 49ers sailing a 29er.” The 420 was another option but other than sailing in the boat a little with some German friends Lehtinen never seemed to consider the class a viable option due to scarity of numbers in her native Finland. “There were some 420s around when I quit sailing Optimists, but only a couple of them. There had been a class before which had died and these were two new boats back again but it was a dying class really.”

In 2001 Lehtinen was on another exchange to the US, though this time only a month. The visit happened to coincide with the Byte World Championship which she competed in and won. As a result of this the same year, she gained her first competitive match race experience when she was invited to do bow at the Women’s Match Racing World Championships in Italy where she says the team did “really badly.” The following year she went back to the Byte again briefly to take part in the Youth World Championships where she finished fourth overall. Her taste for another year passed and she was invited to skipper for a Finnish match racing team at the Europeans in Helsinki because the regular skipper was pregnant. At this, her first match racing event helming, Lehtinen managed a sixth place overall.

Throughout this time Lehtinen was still sailing the 29er with her regular crew and was regularly training against her father and stepmother in their 29er. Her father, she says, has been one of the major influences in her sailing career to date as a multitude of coaches came and went. “There are a couple of coaches from Finland who are really rather good,” she explains. “The coaching scene has developed a lot just in the last few years so that is good now but before I have always had different coaches. The only one that has stayed there the whole time really is my dad and he is a really experienced sailor so we have always talked a lot about tactics and sailing.”

Lehtinen sailed two 29er World Championships first in 2004 in Silvaplana, Switzerland and then in 2005 in San Francisco, where she was first female on both occasions. However, it was not until she and her usual crew went their separate ways in late 2005 that she saw a podium finish in the open fleet. “Over Christmas of 2004 I went to Australia and did the Australian Nationals with [Scott Babbage]. He and his old skipper were in Finland training with us for a week or so in 2004 and so then they invited us to go over,” she says of how this came about. She had officially stopped sailing the 29er, when as a one-off she and Babbage teamed up once again for the 2006 29er World Championships in Weymouth where they won convincingly.It would seem mixed sex pairs are doing well in the 29ers at present with Jacqui Bonnitcha and another experienced 18ft skiff sailor Euan McNichol winning the event the previous year, though Lehtinen admits mixed gender, mixed nationality pairs are rare.



In addition to all her 29er and Byte sailing and match racing Lehtinen also campaigns a 49er in Finland with regular crew Rasmus Järvinen. “There are definitely more women sailing 49ers in Finland than anywhere else, but you still do not find many over there,” she explains. She sails the 49er partly because it is a great deal of fun but also because of the publicity opportunities it offers. In Finland there is a very competitive summer 49er and 29er Grand Prix series. “The summer circuit is made for publicity and the media so the courses are really short and really close to the shore and then it is usually quite light winds so it is easy for girls to step in. The whole thing is televised, so it is really good for the sponsors.”

Publicity is key to Lehtinen as on top of the 49er and Match Racing she now does, she is also in the middle of an Olympic campaign. All three of these campaigns are paid for largely with sponsorship money which the team works fight to acquire. “It is hard work getting [sponsors].” Lehtinen explains. “We spent almost 200 hours last year doing presentations so it is a real pain. The 49er is one thing that we are dong for that reason as well because there is such good publicity at the Grand Prix events.”

Although she will continue to match race this year and will also keep up her 49er sailing, Lehtinen says her main focus and priority now is a Yngling Olympic campaign. Although the team have been sailing the Yngling for less than a year they started this season impressively, taking third place at the Rolex Miami OCR. “Our goal now is to qualify the country for the Olympics. Last year at the worlds we were the 18th country but since then we have learned a lot. There are two Yngling campaigns in Finland so if we qualify the county there is still a long way to go. The qualification system we have now is really good. First we have to qualify for the country in the summer and then next year in Palma and Hyeres will be the qualification between us as to who is going to go. This way we can keep working together for a long time,” Lehtinen comments.

Although the Yngling is now the Olympic class of choice for Lehtinen it has not always been this way. “The boat is a little dull compared to the 29er or 49er. A year and a half ago I was saying to everyone that I would never go and try the Ynglings but then people were pushing me into them. Then we decided to do it and actually after we got used to the boat it is okay,” she says. She continues, saying although the boat is not fast like a skiff the tactics are fun at such a high level and she does enjoy keelboat sailing so, so far the class has been okay.



Looking to the future Lehtinen is unsure of her aims longer term. She says she would like to sail the Qingdao and Weymouth Olympics but beyond that is uncertain. With the Olympic circuit in full swing this year and country qualification being this year’s goal, Lehtinen and her team are not going to be doing a great deal of match racing this year. In fact the Queen Mary is one of only two events the team will be attending this season. The plan is to try and do enough events to keep themselves vaguely in the frame in the ISAF rankings where as of 1 February they were 15th.

Something which may well be a factor in her decision making further down the line is the potential introduction of a new women’s Olympic Skiff. Clearly with her 29er and 49er background this type of boat would suit Lehtinen well and she is already involved in the 29erXX class, one feels in preparation. “I hope there will be a skiff for women in 2012. I do not really know what might be selected as I have not sailed all the boats. I am actually going to be [in Hyeres] for the 29erXX and I will be glad to sail all the other boats then as well,” she comments.

If Lehtinen’s life seems a little full up there is another side to it outside of sailing which also demands much of her time. “I am in my second year of studying medicine. I am doing the second year in twice the time now so I am doing half the studies now and the rest next year. The course normally takes six years so it will at least be seven and probably eight,” she concludes.

With such a diverse sailing program and a strong set of results already under her belt, the name Silja Lehtinen is one we can expect to hear a lot more of in the future.