470 contender

Nigel Cherrie talks to Graham Vials - recently second at the 470 Spring Cup on the Cote d'Azur

The pair to beat - Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield

It doesn't take a Cambridge mathematician to figure out that two into one doesn't go but it is an equation that RYA Olympic Manager Stephen Park would love to crack.

Next season he is going to have more talented sailors with clear Olympic medal potential than he has air tickets to the Athens games.

And the 470 men's class is hotting up to be a classic case of two crews trying to outperform each other for one berth and the associated glory.

Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield were the most formidable pair in the 470 prior to Sydney and justified their selection by coming within a whisker of winning Team GB's sixth sailing medal.

The bronze was literally snatched out of their hands in the dying few minutes of the final race by the Argentineans. How the Argys slipped past their Mexican friends at the final mark rounding is still a contentious issue today.

Obviously the Olympics is unfinished business for Rogers and Glanfield. They fully intend to burying the gremlins of their Sydney disappointment (where at the eleventh hour they lost their podium position) in Greece in just over two years time.

A win at the ISAF grade one Hyeres Olympic classes event in 2001 plus the silver medal at the last World Championship means they are well down the road to completing the deal.

But this time you have to enter Graham Vials and Dan Newman into the bargain.

Vials, a 21 year old personable Northern lad, is a clearly a young man on a big mission. During his fly-by visit to the UK this week, he took time out to speak to madforsailing.

Last weekend he and Newman, 24, finished second at the French 470 Spring Cup and this Friday he will fly out to Hyeres, which effectively marks the start of the busy European regatta season.

The Spring Cup, sailed from Cannes on the French Mediterranean coast, was only their second competition together since last September. Newman has spent the winter overcoming an elbow injury. "He doesn't winge as much around the boat whenever he knocks it now," quips Vials.

After winning the qualification series, they finished second to the world bronze medallists Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page from Australia.

Not that Vials or Newman need an ego boost, but beating class veterans Eugeniy Braslavets and Igor Matviyenko (Ukraine), the 1996 Olympic Gold Medallists and current European Champions, always throws extra kudos to an already creditable result.

But in Olympic sailing there is no time to stop for self-gratification as the rest of the world will sail past.

You have to keep moving with the game and preferably ahead of it. "We want to make everything a lot more professional. At this level it is the small things that make a real difference," explained Vials.

They started by asking 49er Olympic silver medallist Ian Barker to join them in France to help with fine tuning. Barker's immaculate and methodical preparation was a significant part of his success in Sydney.

Prior to Cannes, the pair raced at the Princess Sofia regatta in Palma, just after the Team GBR training camp.

"We had a good event in Palma where we achieved everything we were aiming to do, such as try a few rigs out. It came good in Cannes so it's a good omen
for Hyeres".

So what of Rogers and Glanfield? In some countries the Olympic selection process has ended in an ugly war of words or even in bitter court battles.

Instead Vials is remarkably upbeat about the way the inter-team rivalry can only bode well in the long run. "If we achieve what we are planning to achieve it won’t really matter what Nick does. At the same time it's nice that he is around as it pushes us even harder".

Ironically, Vials and Joe Glanfield sailed together in Jim Saltonstall's RYA Youth Squad and won the Silver medal at the ISAF Youth World Sailing
Championship in Japan in 1997.

Graham Vials and Dan Newman