The champ

The Daily Sail catches up with new 49er World Champion Chris Draper

Winning the 49er class with a day to spare at this week's ISAF World Sailing Championships, Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks could not have presented a clearer reason why the team GBR selectors for Athens should pick them.

In theory this could have been impossibly difficult - the 49er is one of the few classes in British Olympic sailing where there are two campaigns with top level funding and if over recent years team GBR has become the force to be reckoned with internationally in the Finn class, then the 49ers have usurped this with an impressive four GBR boats finishing in the top seven at the Worlds.

Draper got together with Hiscocks, who took silver in the 49er with Ian Barker in Sydney, after some musical chairs in British 49er fleet early last year. At the time Draper was sailing with Mark Asquith, while Hiscocks was on the wire for Paul Brotherton.

"Then Simon and I made the decision that we wanted to sail together, which was a pretty damn hard decision to make," says Draper. "I was happy sailing with Mark. He’s a great chap and everything was going to plan. It is just one of those things. A decision I had to make - the opportunity to sail with a past Olympic medallist."

In fact after the usual ride up the RYA pyramid to greatness - Oppies, 420 and the 470, including being pipped for a place in the Sydney Olympic squad - Draper had originally been taught how to sail a 49er by Hiscocks when he had first started sailing the Olympic skiff back in January 2001.

"Simon having taught me how to sail the boat I knew that our partnership could work together and that opportunity came about. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make, but the outcome of it was that we ended up with two of the best 49er teams in the world, because Mark Asquith didn’t have many options other than to go sailing with Paul."

The wife swapping took place just before the Princess Sofia Trophy in 2002 and Draper and Hiscocks have steadily been upping their game ever since. So far this year they have won Olympic classes regattas at Barcelona, SPA and Kiel (and now the Worlds) and were second at the Europeans having led for the entire regatta. "We had a 4th and a 6th at Palma and Hyeres which we were a bit disappointed with," says Draper - seriously.

"The hardest thing is once you get to the front is staying at the front. It is easy to become complacent. I think toward March/April time things weren’t going quite as well as they should have been. We won Barcelona, but we spent the whole event picking holes in our performance and not gaining confidence from the things which we were doing that were good. And coming fourth and sixth at Palma and Hyeres and consequently losing the pre-Olympics to Paul [Brotherton] gave us a good kick up the backside and made us realise we needed to get our heads back down to go out and do the job."

Part of the key to their success at the Worlds was having sailed out of Cadiz for most of this year. "We’ve spent nearly 4.5 months training here," says Draper. "The place does feel like home. It is a fantastic place to train in the winter. We’re pretty tempted to come back this coming winter although we want to spend as much time as possible in Athens. We’re really not sure of our exact plans from now. It is all a bit up in the air. I think in Athens it can be quite cold in December and January and the conditions are not similar at all to what we can expect in the Olympics."

Other than this theirs would seem to be a fairly text book approach. "What we have tried to achieve is to eliminate any weak areas," continues Draper. "We don’t have any weak areas. We don’t care what the conditions are - we can go fast in all conditions. We sail in a tactical manner that is safe and conservative which doesn’t necessarily mean we win that many races, but if we are there in the first bunch we will always stay in the first bunch and probably stretch out our lead. And if we are not in the first bunch, then we’ll pull through to the edge of the first bunch and come away with a fourth."

Like other Olympic sailors Cadiz has been their one and only focus this year as it is the crucial selection point for who gets the chance to represent the Great Britain in Athens. Draper feels their game came together just at the right time. "This week - I guess it has been coming. We’ve sailed all year and always tried not to use our best equipment. We’ve always been saving a lot of things up. And we put all those things together here."

For example for the Europeans they used a year old hull, while they found a favourite mast that they only used at two regattas this year prior to the Worlds. "The masts are all different. It is a one design class, but the level of the sailing that everyone’s doing, you notice differencies between boats and the mast is a very key one. They all come from Ovington. They just bend slightly differently. You start to notice those things. But that is not the secret, everyone who sails in the gold fleet has got masts that they like. It is just another component of the campaign."

Aside from this Draper says that the chemistry between him and Hiscocks works. "We get on very well. We both love sailing the 49er. That makes a massive difference and because of that life is much easier. It means that we love going training. We live, sleep, eat and breath 49er sailing..."

Although Hiscocks has a silver gong to his name already, Draper says he is the last person on the planet to go around shouting about it. "It hasn’t been an issue, although it is great to have the opportunity to sail with someone who has won a medal." But clearly having the more experienced person on the wire is an unusual way of going about sailing a two handed dinghy.

"I make the tactical decisions basically. I have the final decision because I’ve got the stick!" says Draper of this dynamic. "One of the biggest things we’ve tried to do with our sailing is to focus on what’s coming and not what’s happening at that point. Therefore you make better decisions - they don’t have to be snap decisions."

Also significant is their coach, Tom Thorn, who has been with them for almost a year now. Aside from performing normal coaching duties and keeping a weather eye out at what others are using equipment-wise, Thorn acts almost like a manager for the duo.

"He's a very good listener," says Draper. "I guess he is a facilitator. He helps Simon and I work through decisions that we have to got to make about things and he helps provide structure to what we are doing. He is very goal orientated. Everything we do is broken down into processes to make sure we get those processes right to achieve those goals."

Thorn has also been coaching women's 470 sailor Christina Bassadone and Katherine Hopson, who pulled out one of the best GBR results in this class in living memory, finishing the Worlds in fifth place. "He has done wonders with the British 420 squad as well, Luke Patience very nearly won the World Championships this year. He’ll definitely be continuing his involvement with our programme."

At the Worlds themselves Draper says they tried to get through the qualifiers with really good scores and then tried to take each race as it came, without thinking too much about where it was in the series. There were however a few races when the gods smiled on them.

"There were a few key races, ones where we had proper get out of jail cards," admits Draper. "The first race of the championship we rounded the windward mark in 15-16th not looking very good and nearly all the boats apart from two in front of us misjudged the layline to the first leeward mark. By the leeward mark we were up to fourth and then we moved up to third - so that was a pretty special race.

"Another one was where we were over the start line on the last day we sailed, the penultimate day. Later we found out from the race officer that we weren’t - but we went back and then managed to round the windward mark in 7th. Then it was bizarre - it was like the fleet was parting and we were coming through."

While Draper and Hiscocks have got the cream and the coveted position at Athens it is worth sparing a moment's thought in particular for Paul Brotherton and Mark Asquith, team GBR's other A-grade funded 49er campaigners who have walked away from Cadiz with two years of intense work effectively going up in smoke.

"It is an anomaly in our sport," agrees Draper. "We’ve got four British boats in the top seven. It is an incredible team performance from an incredible team. It is just a shame the Olympic games is not raced in the strongest fleet. The Olympic games is pretty much a second rate fleet because it is only one boat from each nation. If you look at athletes, say the 100m, where they have Americans dominating it - we just don’t get the opportunity to be in that scenario."

The irony of this is the truth in the observation that it can be harder to get a place in the Olympics than to win the Olympics themselves. "It is certainly a shame that the likes of Paul and Mark won’t be there. If Paul and Mark were there the chances are that England would get two medals in the 49er."

From here Draper and Hiscocks will take some time off. Draper says that they planned to take two three week long breaks this summer, but in the event spent each and every single day of their holiday working on their boats. Now they plan to take a proper break. Hiscocks is remaining in Cadiz to chill out while Draper is off to sail the Mumm 30 Worlds on board Asterix with some friends.

Training is likely to start afresh early to mid-November. "It is going to be very important, that we focus upon what is important to stay where we are and to keep moving forwards and to win more events. It would be a great discredit to the rest of the 49er team if we went and became lazy and didn’t do well because any one of them could have been in our position and would love to be."

Next year the 49er Worlds are to be held, conveniently, in Athens in April, but this is likely to conflict with Palma and Hyeres Olympic class regattas. The duo then have the choice between continuing with the Olympic classes circuit, such as SPA and Kiel versus time on the water in Athens. "One of the great advantages we had here in Cadiz is just being familiar with the place, not so much the conditions, but just being comfortable where you are. We would be very silly not to make the same happen in Athens."

Draper and Hiscocks also have the advantage of being part of what is proving once again to be a formidable infrastructure the RYA have in place to support the Olympic squad, from money through lottery funding to support campaigns to some of the world's best coaches and technical experts. The RYA's set-up is the current international benchmark in Olympic sailing.

"The governing body and the way it operates and the job that Sparky [RYA Olympic manager Stephen Park] is doing and all the support staff - they couldn’t be faulted for one minute. But the other countries are aware of it, so they are all going to be trying to do that," says Draper.