Great sailors: born or made?

Iain Percy takes an in-depth look at that perennial question. The talented shall not always inherit the earth

What makes a good sailor? This is something I have often thought about and never found one single satisfactory answer.
I have read recently that scientists have discovered that we are no more genetically advanced than a cheese and pickle sandwich and by the same token have a limited number of inherent characteristics. This got me thinking about the existence or non-existence of the so-called natural sailor.

Before you can even argue whether the likes of Ben and Shirley are natural or taught (if that is the right word) you need to have some insight into exactly what it is they do that is so good.

I am of the opinion that the difference between a good sailor and a really good sailor has nothing to do with the number of sit-ups or his quota of practice tacks, it is in fact much deeper. For want of a better description, sailing skill seems to be related to the ability to address wide multi-aspect problems whilst also being able to tightly focus on small-scale issues.

For example, a sailor might be concentrating very intently on steering his boat through the waves but at the same time he must make strategic decisions based on meteorology, tide, and his fellow competitors.

I have come to this conclusion for a number of reasons. Firstly the notion that sailing is in some way an academic test is discarded by so many examples from both ends of the spectrum.

Secondly the notion that sailing ability can be put down to natural physical fitness is also false. Firstly although physical fitness is undoubtedly a massive element in sailing its importance is taken away at the highest level where all the competitors have reached a sufficient level, and secondly because simply the fittest sailor rarely wins.

The big question to me is whether this skill or pair of skills can be learnt or whether you are simply born with it? As with so many of these conundrums, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

I was at a question-and-answer session at the dinghy show and the question was put to Shirley: "What makes you so fast?" She made the point that to make it at the highest level you have to put serious hours in at some point. She is dead right; all the top sailors have spent endless days on the water lining up with their teammates. I spent two such prolonged training periods one in the Laser, in my year off between school and university, and the other over the last couple of years in the Finn.

My opinion is that these practice sessions give you a subconscious memory bank of wave and wind conditions that, although never exactly repeated, are invaluable when a similar challenge comes along. This level of training not only makes a sailor faster through difficult wave and wind conditions, it also frees him to concentrate on tactics at less tricky times because of a honed subconscious steering ability. So is it possible to learn to be fast?

Tactical ability could be looked on in the same way. The more scenarios that a sailor has experienced the more likely he is to make the correct decision when faced with a similar situation. David Howlett used to say to me that a good single-handed sailor needs the body of a 25-year-old and the experience of a matured campaigner. So like speed is tactical ability simply a product of repeated rehearsal? Not exactly.

Practice, I think we all agree improves your ability to perform anything, and the specific concentration techniques needed for sailing appear to be no different. However this conclusion does not answer the question of what makes a good sailor. Consider a curve of sailors' development, I guess it is safe to conclude that there is some aspect of diminishing returns and therefore it looks something like this:

In very simplified terms, talent can be seen as the steepness of curve and the height of the apex. The steepness of the curve becomes even more important if we consider that all aspects of sailing have their own separate curve. The quicker therefore a sailor can reach the tail-off, the more time he can devote to improving other skills. The height of the apex is a hard one, who knows who has more to come, probably not even the sailor himself? The many aspects, and vagueness of performance indicators, is of course what makes our sport unique, but it is also what makes it so unpredictable on an individual basis.

So far I have ignored the commitment element that obviously has an effect on the steepness of the curve; but again is this constant, is the second derivative always negative?

It is of course this commitment argument that selectors often quote in defence of early talent selection; I hope that the selectors have also considered the many other complexities of personal development, as I have, when they tell 'Johnny' that he is the next star of British sailing.