Fresh approach

For his 2012 campaign Nick Rogers has a new crew and new gear

2009 sees Nick Rogers embarking on his fourth Olympic campaign in the 470, but with a new crew. His old childhood friend, also part of the Lymington mafia, Pom Green (son of boatbuilder, Bill) is taking over the crewing spot from Rogers’ long term man at the end of the wire, Joe Glanfield.


The new lad

Thedailysail: Surely you must be bored of sailing a 470 by now?

Nick Rogers: No! I love sailing and the key to it is that it is lot more fun to race at the front, at the sharp end and the 470 is what I am best at. You almost learn more by trying to get better and better and better in a 470. I can push my boundaries, whereas if you start again from scratch it takes a while just to get to the point where you can learn the art of sailing. So, no, I don’t get bored.

tds: How many years is it now?

NR: My first event ever was in 1995, but that was a farce. I started campaigning is 1997, so really it is 12 years.

tds: So Joe is standing down for a year?

NR: Yes. I think Joe is looking to take some time off after 11 years… I am now sailing with Pom, the guy I won the Youth Worlds with back in 1995. It is not for certain that Joe is going to come back and we’re going to sail together or not. I think we are going to see how it goes.

tds: So you might go with Pom or with Joe?

NR: We’ll make a decision at the end of the year, because then that leaves us all plenty of time. My gut feeling is that I will probably continue to sail with Pom, because I feel that after 12 years it is a lot.

tds: You and Joe are an old married couple!

NR: Yes! He is a super sailor and a team – what people forget is that a team is how good you can be as a team and quite often afterwards you start to look back on it and think ‘oh, we could have been better if we’d done this’. But maybe Joe and I have peaked together as a team. So I think we can both understand now that as a team we have reached a stage where we are as good as we can be. But I will never say never, because obviously Pom and I might not get on as a team, we might not gel. And if Joe and I do get back together then I think it will have really helped us because I will have seen something totally different. Pom and I sail in a very different style and it will have shaken everything up. And I think Joe has learned a lot as well from outside of the boat. So it is a win-win.

tds: Has his own ever increasing family - that is a motivation as well?

NR: I am sure it is one of his motivations. He wants to coach, anything really. He is a mega-competitor and he is sharp and I think he just wants to put his mind to other things and not be so uni-directional.

tds: You’ve nnown Pom since you were knee-high?

NR: I’ve known him absolutely forever. His parents and my parents are great friends, so we’ve grown up together. He was best man at my wedding. We sailed against each other and together all of our lives. I did the Cadet Worlds with him, then 420s and won the Youth Worlds.

tds: So he is putting his boat building business on hold?

NR: I think he is going to try and do it at the same time. Quite how you will have to ask him. He is supposed to be a technical director but he has partners in it and Saskia [Pom’s sister] is the bail out when it gets complicated and busy! I don’t know how he is planning on doing it, but when we talked through the dates he was happy with that.

tds: He’s the same age as you?

NR: He is a year younger. I am 32.

tds: So what is your program for 2009 in this odd year straight after the Games? Not that full-on?

NR: The thing is that time waits for no man, to coin a corny phrase. But the way the Olympics is panning out in 2012 and then the selection trials and the World Championships – the first part of the selection trials could start in 2010, so that then means that you have to be putting yourself seriously in the framework by 2010. So we just don’t have time to mess around. This year I am starting with a new crew, so you have to get the basic skills down. And this is our only opportunity to change things in a broad sense. So we are doing a lot of equipment development. I have changed my main, jib and spinnaker since the Olympics and we are looking at the rig and the centreboard. So that it is pretty much a full change and that is not just because of Pom being slightly heavier than Joe. I believe that we got a bit stuck in the dark ages building into China and there were things that I wanted to do for that, but it just didn’t work out. It is such a hard place to sail and train – you couldn’t just go there and casually do development work, because when you arrived to do the testing there’d be no wind for two weeks and you’d be getting on a plane in two and a half.

tds: Presumably with Perth [the ISAF Worlds in 2011] and Weymouth ahead of you, you must be thinking about potentially breezy regattas?

NR: The windy weather sailing is something that I find incredibly simple. I won’t gear the boat towards that because a rig for windy weather is flat with straight back sails and a fairly flat head in the jib and that is the polar opposite to what you want in the majority of wind conditions, which is 8-14/15. So I think we are going to stick to that more common weather. The sea breeze in Weymouth is never very strong, never much more than about 12 knots, so I think we’ll aim towards that. And when it blows 25 we will have used the rig in that so we will still know the settings.

tds: There can’t be that much you don’t know now about the 470?

NR: I’ve seen a lot of circles. The irony is that I stuck up a bunch of sails in 1997, in 1998 I put up an Olympic jib which to all intents and purposes is actually an Ullman from 1984, the same jib. Then we put up an Olympic mainsail in 1999 and I used that main and jib the whole way until the end of Athens and beyond. And then in China we copied a Tony Tio Quantum jib and the Japanese North spinnaker and those were the only changes. So really I’ve used the same rig for 12 years and everyone else has done the full swings and roundabouts.

tds: So you are going to start with a clean sheet of paper?

NR: Yes, a clean computer screen. We are going to start from scratch. We are starting with Quantum in Barcelona and hopefully we’ll go the whole way through with them because they make beautiful sails. Fernando Sallent there is just incredibly enthusiastic. He built the Kiwi sails and the Spanish sails in China – so, not a big presence, although the Spanish were fifth. He just makes beautiful sails. For a long time I have been wanting to use his rig and we haven’t done it because we ran out of time. So we’ll work with him on the design. We have a new spinnaker from him which we tried and it worked first hit, which is unheard of in a 470! So I am really keen.

tds: What are you doing this year regatta-wise?

NR: I am doing Princess Sofia and in May there is a little baby issue. My wife is due on 11 May. And then we’ll see what happens. Essentially the plan is to do Holland Regatta and then the Europeans. I wanted to do Kiel but there is a clash, so I swapping it for the Europeans which I don’t want to do because I am a rubbish laker, but I think we need the racing experience. Then the World Championships in Copenhagen in August and Sail For Gold in September. In December we’ll probably go to Australia.

tds: What is your feeling about the Sailing World Cup?

NR: I think it would have been good. I would think about it seriously if it worked, but they can’t seem to sell it and no one has got the money to travel round.

tds: Are there any new players coming into the 470s, new competition for you?

NR: A lot of people have left. The Aussie crew are coming back with a new helmsman. I am sure they will be very good, but really one of their team’s strengths was Nathan’s boat on boat ability. So it will be interesting to see how that pans out. Then a lot of the old teams have stopped, but this year isn’t a good indicator because it is an off year from the Games. In our squad we have Nic [Asher] and Eliot [Willis] who have won two World Championships. We are both gunning for each other. We have put a squad together and it is amazing how positive they are about forming a really good elite group of British 470 sailors. I feel really confident that if we work together we will be a success of a home team. But I think the home games could become a daunting thing unless you go in as favourite, mad to win it, it could get quite distracting.

tds: Who are you using for coaching at present?

NR: At the moment we have two coaches, Steve Irish, who I sailed with in 1997 and Morgan Reeser who coached Christina [Bassadone]. And Hamish [Wilcox] my old coach is doing the America’s Cup. He’d be fantastic, but he’s just booked out. He’s doing weather for BMW Oracle and he is on the boat now – he does either mainsheet or traveller.

tds: So you’ll keep that set-up?

NR: I think so. I am open to suggestions. If Hamish wanted to come back that would be great. Hamish has coached us since 1998. He absolutely moulded us, everything about the way Joe and I sail was developed through him, so he is a huge part of our psyche to race.

tds: Morgan will take over his role?

NR: No. He is a very good coach - Morgan got a silver in Barcelona in the 470. I haven’t done much work with him. He is very good on his technology and he has a good eye for the rig, so he will be more on the technical stuff. Morgan is very accurate and good at the detail. Steve [Irish] is a great organiser, a Jim Saltonstall sort of person. He will keep the squad moving forward all the time and he is very good at the big picture.

tds: Are you going to be doing any other sailing this year?

NR: I sail quite a lot, but not like Ben [Ainslie]. I will do Cowes Week and Round the Island. I am not doing Cowes Week on the [the Rogers family’s Contessa] 32. I own a 26, but I think I will be doing Round the Island with Volvo on a slightly faster boat. I am doing the Swan Europeans. And that’s about it.