Origin conflict?

GBR Olympic Director, Stephen Park, gives TheDailySail some details of the recent Skandia Team GBR Olympic Squad announcements

The RYA yesterday announced the majority of the Skandia Team GBR squad for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The announcement was a well publicised affair taking place in Weymouth at the start of GBR’s flagship Olympic classes’ regatta, Skandia Sail For Gold.

Rarely in Olympic selections are there any great surprises and a number of those selected were reasonably predictable. For example Paul Goodison’s selection in the Laser has felt all but guaranteed for a long while now. However, there were some shocks today as news came in of who had been officially invited to attend the Games and who would have to wait and see (see the official press release here).

Below: Paul Goodison.


The most surprising announcement today was of Iain Percy and Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson, who have, as yet, not been nominated for the Olympic Star spot. The RYA press release sent out today simply stated that “In the Finn (heavyweight dinghy) and Star (men’s keelboat) classes, the RYA’s selectors have deferred their selection decisions, pending further discussions with the sailors concerned.” The lack of selection in the Star is surprising for two reasons; firstly Percy and Simpson have had an impressive season having taken bronze at the ISAF Sailing World Championships in Cascais earlier in the year and having last week secured another bronze at the Star European Championships. Clearly they are a team on form and quite able to bring a medal back from China. Second is the fact there are effectively no other active Olympic standard Star teams in Britain. With both of these reasons it does not seem unreasonable to assume this pairing should be celebrating their Olympic nomination tonight.

Below: Stephen Park.


However, life in Olympic sailing is never easy and the fact that the Finn is also mentioned in the same terms as the Star gives us a reasonable indication of what might be standing in between Percy and Simpson’s Olympic ambition: the TeamOrigin America’s Cup challenge. Both Percy and Ainslie will be deeply involved in TeamOrigin, Ainslie as helmsman/skipper, Percy as tactician,so it is not unreasonable to assume this is the case. “We are currently in the process of having conversations with both Iain [Percy] and with Mike Sanderson at Origin,” confirms Skandia Team GBR Olympic Director Stephen Park. “We just want to make sure we are all happy that it is possible for them all to put together the programme we need for them to get medals but not leave it so that they are compromising the Origin programme and vice versa. We have got a great working relationship with Origin so I do not envisage any great problems and Iain and Bart are still determined to go to the Olympics. However, there are just a few things that we still need to agree there.”

It is fair to say then it seems Percy and Simpson are already all but selected and Park confirms this in a round about way. “There are a certain number of formalities for feeding that information back into our Olympic selection committee and getting all that signed off,” he comments. “We did not have that process complete when we came to make today’s announcement. We will do all of that and make an announcement regarding the Star in due course and that announcement will be before the end of the month.”

With regard to the Finn, the situation is a little bit more different. Although exactly the same has been said about both classes so far in press releases from the RYA, they are actually in slightly different situations. As mentioned above Percy and Simpson are the only reasonable candidates in the Star, but Ben Ainslie, in the Finn, does not have this luxury, even though he has won the class in both Olympic test events, is a four time World Championship winner, is the Athens Gold medallist and possibly the most successful Finn sailor ever. “With Ben we still have the situation of whether or not the trials should continue with him racing against Ed Wright who has been a top performer over this Olympic cycle,” Park explains. “Other than the 2006 test event Ben and Ed have not raced against each other. Even taking that into consideration, we obviously could still opt to select Ben at this juncture provided he commits to the programme like Percy. Equally though, we do not want to decide we are going to carry on the trials process, pick a couple of events and find for some reason that one of the events that we have selected happens to clash with something that is crucial for Team Origin that just does not make sense.”

To some extent it seems the jury is still out on whether the Finn trials will continue and according to the letter of the RYA selection procedure it is a tough decision to make. Currently, though it feels as though the RYA is gearing up to select Ainslie but need to finish off the talks with Origin before they can officially confirm this. Frankly though, sending anyone else to the Olympics in the Finn, even if Ainslie does have some serious commitments to TeamOrigin, would be a massive mistake on the RYA’s part.

While Percy and Ainslie look likely to go to the Olympics another big British sailing name has definitely been put out of the frame. Two time Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson is not going to be attending the Games in China after her old crew of Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb, along with Pippa Wilson were today officially selected to fill the Olympic spot. For many this will feel like a disappointing blow as a number of sailors were gearing up to cheer Robertson to her third Gold in a row, something many thought would catch the eye of the media. However, it can’t be denied that Ayton Webb and Wilson have had a phenomenal season finishing on the podium in every major event and winning the World Championships and Olympic Test Event.

In a statement released by her team today Robertson said “I am very sad and disappointed following today’s decision by the RYA not to continue the Olympic trials for the Yngling’s. Whilst Sarah Ayton and her team have had an excellent year, we were the only British class where the top two teams were so close, with both teams finishing on the podium at the ISAF World Championships in July. Having had just eight months preparation for the World Championships I truly believe we haven’t had the chance to prove ourselves in the crucial Olympic year. In not extending the trials today I believe the RYA has taken the easy decision. Anything less than a gold medal in the Yngling class at next years Olympics will leave questions unanswered about the RYA’s selection process.” Fighting words indeed and undeniably there will be those who believe the trials should continue. However, it would be a brave group who did not select a team that have shown as much promise and current form as Ayton, Webb and Wilson.

This statement by Robertson, however, does raise one area of interest; why have so many classes been selected this early. We suspected the female 470 representatives to be selected and the Laser representative as these are currently unchallenged positions. We also suspected that Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes would be selected in the 49er class. However, we thought the Yngling trials may continue longer andwe also expected the Tornado trials to continue. Perhaps slightly cynically we wondered if this number of positions had been announced to help boost the profile of the new-last-year Sail for Gold regatta. Particularly we noted a number of the positions were “subject to the agreement of, and delivery against, certain performance targets.” Were these names added to boost announcement numbers?

Below: Morrison and Rhodes


We questioned Park as to why some sailors had not been officially selected and just what performance targets they were expected to achieve. Park assures us that the number of sailors selected is nothing to do with the Sail for Gold regatta. “Those sailors are our selected sailors that have been chosen on their results,” he comments. “The process works that we select sailors and then nominate them to the British Olympic Association – the BOA. They then approve them as eligible in terms of being British and meeting the requirements of the IOC charter. The BOA then sends them athlete contracts. Once they have signed those contracts they [the BOA] send a letter saying ‘congratulations you are part of the Olympic team.So they are only officially a part of the team when they get that. What we are saying is that the first three people (Yngling, 49er and Laser) we will nominate at the first possible opportunity. With the other people we are saying ‘you are selected, the trials is over, no one else will be selected, we want you to focus on China now but we just want to work with you on some areas of your programme to ensure you are not taking your foot of the pedal.’” He goes on to say those targets will not be results-based and they will not be released to the public. They will only be areas to work on with specific athletes.

To put it simply then all those announced as selected today have indeed been selected, but it is a matter of timing as to when they officially get nominated to the BOA. Park says to some extent this is a matter of the psychology of the nomination process in that the RYA want to take the pressure off people without having them being relaxed in their position. This still seems a little odd to us and we do feel there might have been some want to have one big announcement at one moment though there is clearly not going to be any confirmation of this.

So going on what Park says, to all intents and purposes the only class still not to have a selected candidate (with the possible exception of the Finn) will be the Laser Radial. Interestingly, although no one sailor has been officially named in this class, the RYA have decided to name a number of sailors who will be going forward to the next stage of the trials. This must be a disappointing result for 2004 Olympic representative, Laura Baldwin, who is effectively the only top name to be removed from the Radial list. “The way that the Trials process operates for us is that we shortlist on who goes onto the next stage of the Trials and in that class we have decided to shortlist the four sailors,” Park explains.

It seems then the British Olympic Sailing Team is all but selected with the exception of the Laser Radial and possibly the Finn and providing an agreement can be reached with Team Origin as to how much time each sailor can devote the Games. Now we wait until the end of the month for announcements about the Star, the Finn and the Radial trials.

Selected sailors:

The following sailors have been selected by the RYA’s Olympic Selection Committee, and will be nominated to the British Olympic Association at the earliest available opportunity:

Yngling – women’s keelboat
Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson

49er – skiff
Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes

Laser – men’s one person dinghy
Paul Goodison

The following sailors have been selected by the RYA’s Olympic Selection Committee, and will be nominated to the British Olympic Association subject to the agreement of, and delivery against, certain performance targets:

RS:X – men’s windsurfer
Nick Dempsey

RS:X – women’s windsurfer
Bryony Shaw

470 – men’s two person dinghy
Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield

470 – women’s two person dinghy
Christina Bassadone and Saskia Clark

Tornado – multihull
Leigh McMillan and Will Howden

In the Laser Radial class (women’s one person dinghy) the trials process will continue for a shortlist of four sailors – namely Charlotte Dobson, Penny Clark, Andrea Brewster and Lizzie Vickers – whose performances will be assessed at a number of regattas in the spring of 2008.

In the Finn (heavyweight dinghy) and Star (men’s keelboat) classes, the RYA’s selectors have deferred their selection decisions, pending further discussions with the sailors concerned.