Sparky's Olympic update

RYA Olympic Manager Stephen Park brings thedailysail up to speed the Team GBR road to 2012

The RYA's Olympic Manager, Stephen Park was the Dinghy Show at the weekend, providing an ideal opportunity for the Daily Sail to catch up with a state of nation regarding Skandia Team GBR and his thoughts going forward towards London 2012.

The Daily Sail: We understand that several other nations are studying the successful Team GBR format hard - are you worried about others catching up?

Stephen Park: "There is no doubt that people will catch up and it will be more competitive in 2012 than ever before. We can see that from the international activity that is going on in Weymouth already. But we will continue to evolve our program and how we are working with our sailors. At this stage of the program it is about tightening up our activity. It is about consolidating in certain areas, in certain areas of our support and making sure that, like any business in this economy, we don’t have too much fat in certain areas, and being fit for purpose, although unlike many other businesses we are not directly related to finance companies, because the bulk of our budget is secure for the next four years. It is about making sure we get the biggest bang for our buck and if we spend too much money in some areas, there won’t be enough money for other areas."

DS: Anything specific?

SP: "We are working very hard in terms of a performance management system, to make sure we have got a continual program of assessing and working with the sailors and coaches to ensure that we are spending money in the right areas. In terms of specifics we’ll be reducing the number of staff we have on the sports science side. We’re reducing to a certain extent some of the coaching staff and again none of these are things we wouldn't otherwise do in the first year of the cycle. And we’d expect that to grow again. Of course that will give us savings and we’ll input those into different areas of the program which hopefully will give us a lead into 2012, developing some technical projects which we can do at this stage of the cycle and get into usable shape in time for 2012, whether it is developing training opportunities for people in Weymouth or bringing in people in specialist areas. So rather than having generic coaches across our Development and Performance squads, maybe having one coach dealing with both squads and then supplementing that with some technical specialist coaches in other areas so that we can get the maximum return for the sailors at this stage in the cycle."

DS: Down to the individual sailors, what's going on in each class?

SP: "Pretty much all the sailors from 2008 are going again in the same classes with a couple of exceptions. At the moment Joe Glanfield is taking a year out, but he might well come back. So Nick Rogers is sailing with Pom Greeen. They are going to have a go at it for a year to see how they get on and Joe is going to take a year doing some other bits and pieces, working on some of the coaching side with us and doing some other work with the Youth Sport Trust and getting his head out of the boat and getting into the world of employment for a while and then looking about whether he has the motivation to get back into the 470.

"In the 470 Women we have Sarah Ayton and Pippa Wilson, who have moved from the Yngling. They are sailing in a new class. Other than that – Christina [Bassadone] has gone to the Laser Radial for the time being. She is just seeing whether that is what she wants to do. She still has a 470 so that option is still open to her. We will see how the dust settles after a while. It is good for her to sail the Laser Radial, she’ll learn some different skills, she has the opportunity to do it all herself, to control her own destiny and equally she needed to do something a little bit different just for herself. And if that is going well she can continue and if not she is an experienced 470 campaigner and she can get back into the 470 fairly quickly if need be in the second half of this year or early 2010."

DS: Are there any other new faces coming into the Radial?

SP: "Not so many new faces coming in. Obviously Andrea Brewster was a medallist in the World Championship in the Radial last year and she will be trying to see if she can get some consistency. And we have Charlotte Dobson who will be finishing her final year of studies this May, so her program will be ramped up as well. I think those two will be charging fairly hard and it will be interesting to see if any of them can get that level of consistency required at a medallist level at international events to make them what we might consider real players."

DS: With Paul Goodison and the Laser we are getting into an Ainslie situation?

SP: "Let’s hope so! Nick Thompson is the pretender at the moment. He won in Miami, so he is right up there in terms of being an international performer. He will be keeping Goodie honest and if Paul slacks off or decides to take it easy, then there is a chance Nick could come through. There is no doubt that he will be competitive this season internationally and if he is selected for 2012 in the long run I’m sure by that stage he will be a very likely medallist. And if someone like Nick has got the goods and capability to beat Paul, then the chances are they are going to be in the running for the Gold medal. So we hope Paul will do well, but we have Nick right there in the wings, so if there is the slightest chink in Paul’s armour…. It is great to have two guys training together. They haven’t been doing too much so far, because Paul’s had some time off, but they will be back in it again now. The plan is that they will be doing training/racing together and that is of course one of the great aspects of the program: to be able to get a number of world class boats in each of the classes, really working together and trying to extend from the rest of the world."



DS: How about the Finn? It will be hard for Ben not to go again?

SP: "If there is something that stops him doing it, like he gets beaten in the trials, but presuming that all that pans out as it does and he is fit and healthy, I’m sure he would love to sail the Olympics in his home country. Wouldn’t we all?! And Ed Wright and Giles Scott - again very much along the lines of the Laser - both of those guys will be keeping Ben honest. They are both full on. Ed has won the first two events this year in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and Giles Scott is getting back into it as well as one of the younger guys coming through. So we have got another two very good sailors there, one of whom is already world class - a past European champion, world championship medallist.

DS: And the Star – Iain [Percy] and Bart {Andrew Simpson] will return to defend their title?

SP: In the Star we have got one younger team coming through as well - John Gimpson and Ed Greig. John Gimpson did very well on the 29er on the youth side and he does quite a lot of keel boat racing with Unlimited Sailing. So he has done a lot of Melges sailing in 24s, 30s and Farr 40s and IRC 45s. He’s done a remarkable amount for his age and he has been relatively successful at that, so trying to see whether he can take some of that in the Star.

DS: So they will be the back up team?

SP: Actually they were desperately keen to do it. And hopefully it will provide someone who is able to act as a bit of a training partner for Percy. But that is not the main reason - they wanted to have a go at it and we are just trying to open the door for long enough for them to have a go to see if that is going to be worthwhile or not. But they are going to have to start delivering some reasonable results pretty quickly, otherwise that is not likely to remain as a good investment for the program. But they are doing quite well at the moment. They were in the top 20 at Miami and they are doing Bacardi Cup this week. So it will be interesting to see how they get on. If they can do well in these early regattas in Miami then it will be a good sign. The fleet there is very competitive there. It is a Who’s Who of sailing."



DS: So is the Tornado totally dead unless we can get the 11th medal back?

SP: Not necessarily. It is actually the other way round. The way it stands at the moment, as I understand, is that we currently have 11 medals and we are asking to retain 11 medals, but there is an understanding between ISAF and the IOC that we are required to go to 10 medals. And the IOC at some stage have to confirm whether or not it is going to 10 medals, and if they don’t then it would stay at 11. There are two opportunities for them to do that which are the two meetings that the IOC have this year: one was at the beginning of February and the next one is in September. Unless the IOC have told ISAF and ISAF haven’t made any statement about it, then we should probably presume they haven’t been told they definitely have to go to 10 yet. Now we will be waiting until September. On that basis I would expect that at the ISAF Mid-Year Conference in Denmark, there will be a discussion that will be along the lines of 'if we get the 11th class, what will it be?' And it could be a catamaran or something else, most likely a women’s high performance skiff. So I would expect that we will then be in a situation where there will be some sort of vote between probably the 29erXX, or the Women’s High Performance Skiff, and a multihull, which could well be the Tornado or maybe even a one design Tornado if that comes to fruition. And we will hear later in the year whether that is going to run or not."

DS: What would you like to see?

SP: "Personally I would like to see the Tornado in, but I would have liked to have seen the High Performance Dinghy in too. I would have sacrificed the 470 Women to have that in because I think it is more exciting for the women, it is more athletic and it is more appropriate to the future. I think it is disappointing that it lost by one vote, if I remember correctly, in November. So that would have been a good start, but I do think it would be great to have a multihull in and I would probably vote for a one design Tornado, because I think the Tornado is a fantastic Olympic boat: It is athletic, it is fast, it is colourful, it is high performance, you have got to be fit to sail it and if we can get rid of one or two of the technical inconsistencies between boats, and the daft things like whether you are going to use a Code Zero or not, like we had in the run up to the last Olympics, by making it more of a manufacturer’s one design, I think that will make it even stronger.

DS: So what has happened to the Tornado squad?

SP: At the moment nothing. We have effectively stopped our multihull program. Even though the decision was made that that was going to happen in 2007, we carried on and ran with it right through until November 2008. But there is only so long you can keep supporting something that you don’t think is going to carry on. Again it is about utilising monies effectively. While we are carrying on paying for Tornado sailors that may or may not be part of the Games, that could be money spent on those who certainly are going to be going to the Games.

DS: And the Women's Match Racing...?

SPI think that we’ll probably end up in a situation in a few months’ time where maybe we will have four teams I suspect.

DS: Will you try to run it as a individual teams, or as a squad?

SP: Probably a bit of both. If we have got established teams that are performing particularly well, then we’ll run that like we do with the other Olympic classes and we’ll give them the opportunity to drive their own programs on and we’ll back that up with a development squad-type program - and who is involved with that will depend upon whether we do that as set teams or some mix and match as more of a Dutch Yngling-type program.

DS: How many Elliott 6s have the RYA bought?

SP: Theoretically we have four coming asap. We have been told we should hear by the 13th [March] what the delivery order will be. When we ordered them we thought we’d probably get them April time. As we stand right now if we heard on the 13th we’d get them in July I think we’d be fairly happy.

DS: When do you think we'll see a fleet of Elliot 6s in Europe. In time for the Sail for Gold regatta hopefully?

SP: There are 60 odd boats where there have been provisional orders placed - whether they materialise into real orders once people have to put money on the table, I don’t know. I suspect there will ones that drop off. Then ISAF will determine who will get their boats first. So we are hoping that they will give Germany and Great Britian the boats first and try and supply them in time for them to go to Germany for Kiel Week. If they do that then there is a reasonable chance that we’ll get our boats second, so our boats will go to Kiel to support Kiel Week and then the Germany boats will come to the UK to support the Sail for Gold regatta.

DS: How many do you need?

SP: We need eight boats to run a regatta. 12 would be better. If the boats aren’t ready for Kiel Week and the first event is Sail For Gold, the worry is that ISAF will then choose not to allocate them to the Germans, but to the Australians with Melbourne being the next Sailing World Cup event after the Sail for Gold regatta. Then the problem we’ll have is getting enough boats to make up a fleet for the Sail for Gold regatta and if there is any doubt about that, then ISAF might say ‘we don’t think there will be enough boats for Sail For Gold regatta’ so there is no rush to get them to Great Britain and we’ll just do the Southern hemisphere first. We are fortunate that we have [as a backup] a fleet of J/80s, so we could do it in them, but at the moment we are planning on having eight Elliotts. David Campbell-James is working on the basis of that and we are going to be running an Olympic classes match racing competition.

DS: Are there any other options?

SP: If we thought, for argument's sake, that we were going to be able to get eight boats, but not in time for the Sail for Gold regatta, but maybe a month later, then there is an argument for not holding the match racing at that time, but holding a separate match racing regatta in Weymouth a month later when the boats arrive. Then the other interesting issue is how much interest is there going to be from foreign nations to invest in sending people to non-Olympic class match racing. There were only 12 entries in Miami for example of which three were British and three US, so only six which went to an Olympic classes regatta.

DS: Why was that?

SP: It is expensive. And it is not in the Olympic class [they raced SB3es at Miami] so some of the MNAs that are funding the programs will be wanting to focus their attentions on the Olympic class acitivites when the boats actually come out. And they are probably also trying to establish domestic competitions to work out who should go. In my view ISAF really need to get the Elliotts racing and once that happens, then it will be fine, provided they can then co-ordinate that with WIMRA [Women's International Match Racing Association] to ensure that they don’t have non-Olypmic class match racing for women, clashing directly with Olympic class activities - which is one of the issues they have had this year.

DS: Such as?

SP: There were clashes with Calpe and Princess Sofia and Hyeres, but they seemed to work out how they were going to work around that. Now it has resolved itself it is not a problem at all [this is now no Women's Match Racing at Princess Sofia or Hyeres...] The biggest clash now is that there is a big WIMRA event clashing with Kiel week. The big issue is that the World’s Womens Match Racing boat is in six person 37ft boat.

DS: What advantages are there of hosting the next Games from Skandia Team GBR’s pont of view?

SP: There are not as many as you’d like to think. When it comes down to it, we are just another team. We get no special treatment other than we are guaranteed a place in every class - that is historically how it has been. In fact this was the first Olympic Games where there was an opportunity for this not to be the case. But ISAF decided that they would carry on that principle. The summary of the situation is that they decided that we were going to qualify for this anyway. We are not going to have any special opportunity. Last time we qualified in every class at the first opportunity we had - we were the only country to do that. The concern is that in the typical British spirit of fairness we are positively discriminated against in an attempt not to be seen to be favouritist.

DS: How could that manifest itself?

SP: It could be in any circumstance, whether it is how you allocate space in the dinghy park, the information you provide in the run up to the Games, information that is going to be available to the teams and which order you issue it, how you support visiting teams that are travelling. Or equally activities that is current standard practice for us, an effort is made to stop that because it is felt we are gaining an advantage for being on home waters. Of course we will be doing everything we can to gain an advantage on our home waters like every other country has.

DS: So you don't think you will have much advantage?

SP: No, not much advantage, but having said that, it is our home patch. We do know it well. Everyone knows where to go to buy themselves a chocolate bar, where they can get a cup of coffee, do their laundry - all those things that make you more comfortable in a venue. In fact nearly all of them live down there. So in terms of understanding the culture and the local knowledge that were a big issue in China, none of that will be a concern. Interestingly - and I think all the top teams think the same - it will be between the top sailors and whether you are playing at home or away doesn’t make a big difference.

DS: And are there going to be any changes to the race format, like the introduction of the medal races last time?

SP: Not a the moment.The format appears that it will stay as it is. My understanding is that whether or not they continue with having the medal ceremonies immediately after each of the medal races or whether they go back to the Athens form with more of a ceremony and doing three or four classes at a time. Otherwise the format will be fairly similar to that that we saw in China.