The Achievement

Three golds and two silvers - Mark Chisnell is still trying to get his head round it ...

The Sydney 2000 Games closed on Sunday with a masterpiece of Australian kitsch, and the most impressive firework display I’ve ever seen. But apart from the fireworks, this Games has also set new standards for general Olympic organization, and for Olympic regattas in particular. We can only hope that Glenn Bourke and his management team will be given the chance to pass their experience along to the Greek organizers of the 2004 event.

A new standard has also been set for British sailing teams - three golds and two silvers. I keep repeating it in the hope that it’ll become more believable - but this is nothing less than the team deserved. To get a grasp of the scale of the achievement, you just need to look at a few statistics. The only time we’ve won more medals was back in 1908, when we got four golds, a silver and a bronze at a regatta held in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, and attended by five nations.
Even back in the halcyon days of Rodney Pattisson, in the late sixties and early seventies, we never managed better than a gold and silver - and this was a world with just over 40 nations able to compete at the Olympic regatta. There were 69 countries sailing in Sydney, a rather more competitive environment. In fact, apart from Melbourne in 1956, when Britain won two bronzes and a silver, we’ve not managed to bring home more than two medals from any Games since 1908.

It’s easy to say that it’s the Lottery money that’s made the difference. And writing as one of the many sailors that have seen their own Olympic ambitions fold into a debt-ridden nightmare - yes, the money helps. But it’s not the whole story. It’s how you spend the money that counts, just ask the New York Yacht Club about their recent America’s Cup effort. John Derbyshire, the RYA’s Olympic Manager, and his team cannot be praised highly enough for the job that they’ve done in the last four years.

The list of people involved is long and their efforts will probably never be done justice: Derek Clark and Chris Mason have already been mentioned by Ian Walker; Shirley Robertson talked about Mark Littlejohn giving up his own sailing to work with her, but Jo Richards also flew out to Sydney at very short notice to help Shirley with a boat speed problem; David Howlett has worked tirelessly with British Finn sailors and seen his efforts fully rewarded by Iain Percy’s dominance. Not forgetting all the people that sailed with and against the team through the years leading up to the 2000 British Olympic trials. And those that supported them financially and morally throughout their Olympic preparation - they all share in the triumph. This was a real team effort.

But I suspect that the ground work goes back further than that, ten or even twenty years. Right back to Jim Saltonstall’s first national youth squads, and people like the Jarrett and Tagg brothers. They were prepared to move up into the Olympic environment and take the squad system with them. The free-spirited individualistic approach only gets even geniuses so far, and those early Olympic squad members laid the foundations for the things that work in the modern sports environment - coaching, discipline and support - in short, professionalism. The Sydney results are the fruit of a tree that has spent a long time maturing, and are something of which many people can be proud.

But none of this should take anything away from some exceptionally talented sailors, who had the mental strength to go out there and do the job on the day. Many congratulations to them all.