Hillary has new mountain to climb

Harvey Hillary tells Andy Rice about 49er life after Barker

Harvey Hillary has just completed a whirlwind year crewing for Ian Barker in the 49er. Now the Olympic silver medallist has embarked on his new Star campaign for Athens 2004, Hillary has been plunged back into relative obscurity.
"I’ve got to start again now," he says. "I’m going to start crewing for Piers Reid. He’s by far my best option. He’s young, which is good in the RYA’s eyes, and he is already very good in the 49er. But realistically it’s going to take a year to get up to the level of the top guys in the Olympic Squad. The aim in the short term is to be better than all the others in the Development Squad."

Hillary has been on ‘B’ level funding with Barker, which continues up to Christmas despite the two having gone their separate ways. Money is an issue for Hillary after that, so hooking into some RYA funding on the merits of his performance with Piers Reid will be crucial.

The early signs are encouraging, with Reid and Hillary scoring a third at the RYA National Ranking event at Datchet Water at the end of October. "Who needs Billy?" joked Hillary afterwards, although he acknowledges a huge debt to his mentor over the past season.

"You get these eye openers every so often," says Hillary, whose past sailing experiences amount to a reasonable national record in Solos and 49ers but really very little on an international standing. "You can be sailing along in 25 knots and suddenly realise that you’re not getting nerves in those conditions like you used to. Every part of my sailing has moved on a huge amount since sailing with Billy."

Hillary says Barker is one not easily given to praise. "It was very rare that I did anything and he said: ‘That’s good.’ But I thought I was pretty self-critical, and yet sailing with him has helped me to step up a couple of levels. At the end of this, I look back on having gone through a huge learning curve.

So what was Barker like to sail with? "I was really surprised how calm and collected he was about the whole thing. He hardly ever raises his voice. Billy is also very switched on about what’s going on the race course at any moment - he’s got the big picture. He may not be naturally fast like Alister Richardson, who is capable of generating huge speed out of the boat, but tactically Billy is very good at knowing when to put the bow down for speed or head up for height. His ability to change modes is excellent."

Money's too tight to mention on page 2