Battling down-under

Nick Rogers talks about the Qingdao-like conditions at the 470 Worlds

Currently being sailed from Mordialloc Sailing Club, Australia are the 470 World Championships. This regatta represents the final 470 Worlds to take place before the Olympic Games in the summer and as such has attracted the best of the best 470 sailors to battle it out for the title.

One such top team are 2004 silver medallists, Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield (GBR), who are attending after taking victory last week at the Sail Melbourne Olympic Classes Regatta. Rogers and Glanfield have already been selected as the British representatives for the Olympics this summer and are currently sitting in third position, behind fellow Brits, Nic Asher and Elliot Willis.

Knowing they have not been to many championships recently and also that they will want to peak at the right time in this Olympic year we were intrigued to know just how important this World Championship was to the team. “This is a really big deal. For us it is huge, partly because we have never won a World Championships,” Rogers told TheDailySail after getting off the water today - evening time in Australia

So far conditions at the championships have been unexpectedly light, which has been messing with the pre-event form guide. “Everyone was expecting a big howler in Melbourne, or at least I certainly was, and it is not happening, today has been another really light day. We had about a max of ten knots and it dropped all the way down to about four knots at one point” Rogers said.

Not only has the wind bought surprises but the sea state on Port Philip Bay has not been as expected, though it has felt familiar to many teams. “When we did Sail Melbourne down the road, that was a classic sea breeze venue. It is really famous for the big waves there,” Rogers comments. To some extent conditions at the Worlds venue, just down the coast, were expected to be similar. However, as Rogers explains, so far they have not been. “Actually here it has been a really short chop. With that and the light, tricky winds it has been really like Qingdao if I am honest,” he concludes.



Rogers says they have no great problem with the conditions and actually feel one of their great strengths is their ability across a very broad range of sea and wind states. However, because of this the Brits are hoping for a solid breeze at some point. “The more [the weather] changes the better really, as we are happy in all winds,” he explains. “If it was windy, though, it would remove some of the light weather specialist sailors. It looks like we could have some big sea breezes in the coming days but the weather is being a bit fickle. We will have to wait and see.”

After coming from a win at the Sail Melbourne regatta we thought the pair would be full of confidence about the World Championships. However, it appears Sail Melbourne was not the huge boost some might perceive it to be. “As it turned out at Sail Melbourne a lot of people retired or missed the whole event. So in the end we won, but there were a lot of good people missing. Obviously to some extent [winning] was [a confidence boost]. To us through, the most important thing about the event was to nail down any problems we might have with the venue and set-up. We just wanted to make sure that we were ready to race again because it has been a while,” summed up Rogers. It is easy to see why they wanted to treat this event as a warm-up. Besides the relatively small Sail for Gold regatta in September, the last big gig Rogers and Glanfield attended was the Pre-Olympics in Qingdao last summer.

“We have been second twice and have come third, so we are really keen to win one,” Rogers explains. “It is slightly odd as this was supposed to be a windy event and the Olympics are supposed to be light. Before coming here we did wonder how relevant it would be to the Games but it is still a big deal. We are going to give it everything we have got.”

With the team currently sitting in third position overall at the regatta, it’s something Rogers is pleased with: “We are really happy with where we are at the moment. We have one race tomorrow and that is still qualifying. The most important thing at this stage is going to be holding onto our discards so if we can get another top five or top ten result that is going to be really, really important. It really wont matter at that stage whether we are second, third, fourth or fifth overall.”

After the single, final race of qualifying tomorrow the fleets will be divided into their gold, silver and bronze final fleets. There will be seven races in the final series at this year’s Worlds, something that is unusual in itself. “I don’t know why we have seven races in the final series. We usually have less, but it means the hunt [for medals] will be that bit longer,”he says. “What is going to matter most at this event is staying in the hunt for the medals. I think the first day of the finals is going to be about not losing a medal. We are going to need to keep just a little bit conservative on our starting, making sure we do not get OCS and so on until the last couple of races really. Then we will look at our position and decide what we need to do to win the event. Until we get to that stage I do not know what that might be.”

At the end of racing today Rogers and Glanfield were actually the second placed British team, being just behind Nic Asher and Elliot Willis who are lying in second overall. However, despite the close competition between these two teams and Rogers and Glanfield getting selection to the Games the four sailors are still very friendly. “Nic and Elliot are really friendly and it is really good for us that we have such a great training partner,” Rogers comments. “If you are building up to the Olympics and your training partners are no good then you are just not going to do well, it is as simple as that. Going into Athens they were our training partners and so was Graham Vials and that really helped. I have absolutely no doubt they contributed to us winning a medal.”

Racing at the 470 World Championships continues until Tuesday 29 January