Battle of the blonds

Shirley Robertson talks to thedailysail about her return to form in the Yngling

Two British Yngling teams are fighting it out for the top of the podium in Cascais at the ISAF World Sailing Championships. Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson are currently leading and have been the on-form team all season, placing on the podium in every regatta they have attended. Shirley Robertson along with crew, Annie Lush and Lucy Macgregor, however, seems to have overcome her early season teething problems and is once again showing some of the pace that has seen her to two successive Gold Medals.

Robertson retired mid-way through the Breilting Regatta, (previously SPA/Holland Regatta), earlier this season after a disastrous first two days were she struggled to pull out of the 20s. After the first two days of racing the team withdrew from the event citing major “technical difficulties”. A press release from Team Shirley Robertson, said: “Team Shirley Robertson have announced their withdrawal from the Breitling Olympic Regatta, in Holland, in order to carry out important work on their Yngling. The team will have the necessary work carried out in the UK, before returning to their base in Cascais, Portugal.”

Now in Cascais at the all-important ISAF Sailing World Championships Robertson is currently lying in second place overall in the Yngling class, though a full 11 points behind her main competition for the British Olympic spot, Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson.

Having hit the top positions throughout the week and now looking set to push Ayton and the other Yngling’s all the way to the finish, what exactly have Robertson, Lush and Wilson done to their boat that has caused their return to form? The shortest answer to this question is extremely simple; they replaced it. “We are here with a new boat to start with,” Robertson told TheDailySail. “We definitely had some problems with foil shape on the last one. Our new boat here is a Petticrow, which is our first one ever - that has different foil sections to the old boat.”

If the problems with foil shape were significant enough to change their performance so drastically one might wonder why it has taken the team the best part of a year to figure out exactly what was wrong. “As with everything under the water it takes a while to recognise what the problem is. You spend the whole race looking at the sails so you tend to think there is some sort of problem there. Our problems [in Breitling] were so severe though, it became obvious it was something else,” Robertson explains.



In addition to this it has not simply been a case of just replacing the boat and suddenly finding more speed. Robertson comments that during their whole campaign they have been keeping up work on refining rigs and sails and, at this event have brought along new versions of these as well.

The old ‘slow’ boat, however, is still the boat Robertson managed to win the Sail For Gold regatta in against (among others) Ayton, Webb and Wilson last October. So what changed between then and Breitling? “[The boat in Breitling] was the boat we were using at Sail For Gold, but [the event] is fundamentally different. If you sail around in any boat in a fleet of ten then sail with 35-40 boats you require much more from your foils. This is because you will have to be tacking a lot more and sailing in dirty air a lot more. It is a very different requirement,” she says.

Potentially another factor in the team’s improvement at this event is Robertson herself. On Wednesday evening just before the start of Yngling racing on Thursday RYA Olympic Manager, Stephen Park said: “Shirley’s always at her best, I think, when she’s got her back against the wall and she’s under a bit of pressure to deliver at the big event – and she’s got a record of doing that.” For her part, although she pointedly avoids the word pressure, Robertson seems to agree with the general sentiment of this statement. “I think I have always been very endgame-orientated. For us this is a very important event. If you do not do well here then that is it. Everything we were doing was focussed on this. How we did in SPA or Hyeres is completely irrelevant. I know how to put together a programme and I know how to make that all come together at the right time. We have struggled here and it is all just a little bit too late even for me.”

Although the team have proved themselves fast this week they are still second Brit on the results board at this stage, though there is still a lot of regatta remaining. “I think we are a little bit on the back foot now. We are a little bit behind, but not a lot. There are still four races to go plus the double point non-discard Medal Race. It is very much still there for us for the taking. We just can’t afford to make mistakes,” Robertson confirms. “We are sailing really quick so now we just need to bugger them, get out there and do it, that is the only strategy left to us because now half way through we are on the back foot.”