Going to whole hog

The Daily Sail catches up with Paul Brotherton to discuss the supercharging of their 49er Olympic campaign

The 49er program Paul Brotherton and Mark Asquith have put together to ensure they are part of the potential medal haul come the Athens Olympics next year has taken another impressive step forward with the announcement of their support by Team Tonic's Nick Hewson who has purchased two new boats for the British duo - a new Ovi and another from top Kiwi builder David MacKay - now christened the StereoTonics.

The British duo now have a fleet of four boats, with, aside from the two news ones, the boat they have been developing in Cadiz over the winter and another new Ovi they took to the Worlds last year.

"You would think four boats is a little excessive, but if we want to go to the pre-Olympics in Athens then we lose a boat for 2.5 months in the summer while it's shipped there and back," explains Paul Brotherton. "And then we’ve got all the northern European regattas and the events we want to do in the UK. .Then we’ve got all the training we want to do in Cadiz. And if you want to do all of that with two boats, then we need to do a hell of a lot of driving! As it is now we leave next week with two 49ers and a RIB and we are completely self-sufficient throughout April, May and June. And we are able to get home and when we’re home we can still do some sailing."

At present it is undecided whether Ovingtons or MacKay make the faster 49ers. The former took the top three spots in the Worlds last year, while the latter have taken four out of five of the last World Championships. "We are extremely happy with the Ovington and that is the boat we intend to use unless we are proved differently. But we would be silly not to cover all the bases," says Brotherton. The only noticable difference we could see between the two boats is that on the Ovi the European Union allow you to carry 5kg of baggage.

"We are spending an absolute maximum - including the money we get to keep our life on board for both me and Mark - of probably less than £80,000," says Brotherton. "It is not an awful lot. So I’m not sitting here thinking 'oh my god aren’t we hard done by'. I’m sitting here thinking, 'my God I’ve got the chance of a lifetime here and I feel like a very lucky boy'." He points out that they are still scratching around for money at the end of the month to pay some bills and it is fortunate that the wife has got a new job.



From left to right: Mark Asquith, a 26 year old girl (who Brotherton once upon a time taught skiff sailing), Ian Cleaver, Nick Hewson and Paul Brotherton.

Team GBR upped the Olympic game at Sydney. Now Brotherton thinks Olympic sailors are going to have to take another step forward. "I think probably Team GBR took a step forwards last time in terms of their ability to be professional. They were able to focus on sailing rather than getting distracted by ‘my god, how are we going to be able to afford to go sailing?’ So there were probably 3-4 people who said almost at any cost 'I am going to do what it takes', and those people were ultimately successful. I think the rest of the world have looked at it and have said 'if that was good enough last time it’s probably not going to be good enough next time and so we’re going to have to raise the game again'."

Despite their four boats, Brotherton denies that Olympic sailing is turning into an arms race. "Having the most money doesn’t mean you have the best campaign. But anybody who thinks they can do it on pure talent is frankly full of shit. Inevitably there is going to be a point where equipment is important. But having the right equipment is only a function of how much you wanted it and how much you were prepared to fight and think about how you were going to get that equipment."

His year old association with his 23 year old crewman Mark Asquith seems to be working out well. "It was immediately clear we have a synergy," says Brotherton. "I was immediately impressed by Mark. He is a very dedicated and enthusiastic nipper. Having sailed with as many good people as I have - Andy Hemmings, Neal McDonald, Simon Hiscocks - there is a lot of things I have learned along the way which I am able to pass on and he makes that very easy for me because it is not always the easiest thing to do when you’re on a two man boat. It can sometimes get a little bit competitive between the two of you. But Mark is very good at avoiding that completely. He really has turned out to be everything I want from a young guy."

At the end of last summer he and Asquith sat down to write their plan, working out what events they needed to do, how to get funding and where their weaknesses lay. "We identified 10 different aspects within the campaign and within those aspects, there were things which needed to be managed and controlled if there was to be no slippage in our campaign," states Brotherton.

Aside from Nick Hewson they have also received support from Scot Ian Cleaver of Island Heritage who helped them get a boat to do the Worlds in last year. Brotherton developed relationships with both his backers having sailed with them - on Cleaver's Melges and on board Team Tonic. However rather just offering money, Cleaver and Hewson both have input on the management side of the campaign as well as giving advice on how they might tackle the 10 points on Brotherton's list.

Below: Nick Hewson tries his hand on the 49er



The program this year sees Brotherton and Asquith doing the rounds of the Olympic regattas that kick off imminently in Barcelona. Then there is the Pre-Olympics in Athens and the 49er Europeans in Laredo in northern Spain. The big one is obviously the mega-World Championships for all the Olympic classes in September in Cadiz.

The result at Cadiz will determine whether or not they or Chris Draper/Simon Hiscocks or Alaistair Richardson/Pete Greenhalgh get the 49er slot for Athens. At present Brotherton and Asquith lie fourth in the ISAF 49er rankings with Draper/Hiscocks fifth and Richardson/Greenhalgh sixth. The RYA's Stephen Park says that if an A-carded sailor finishes within the top three then they will get the slot. If two finish in the two three then the Selection committee will either decide who gets the slot or will hold further selection trials on 3-13 April 2004.

Brotherton is obviously focussing on a win in Cadiz. "I know that if we are able to put our plan into action then we are going to win that event," he says. "Whether competition comes from the UK or aboard is irrespective as far as I’m concerning. If we fulfil our commitment to that plan then we are going to win."

He says that although they will trial the two new boats against each other they will only make the decision about which is better after they have looked at their results on the race course. "We’ll use both boats in the regattas, which is the way I’ll decide on boats anyway. It is not something that is going to be decided in two boat tuning because racing and two boat tuning are always different. You spend all summer two boat tuning with the boat nice and fat on the breeze and then you come out of the start line of the first race of a World Championships and you end up with half the jib coming towards you because everyone is sailing inside the breeze. You have got to keep the boat going quick and the boat has to be quick in those circumstances. So racing will define what boat we use, but we will have a testing program and the point of taking the two boats is that we are able to test different options in a controlled environment in Cadiz over May and June."

To help them they now brought in GBR Challenge designer and former Olympian Jo Richards. "Jo doesn’t clutter it up by trying to be over complicated about things," says Brotherton. "He just looks and says that looks wrong try this. 9 times out of 10 he’s right. So we’ll drop him in and out as we need him."

We will watch with interest for the outcome of this particular showdown.