Sailing or school

John Greenland examines the dilemma facing most potential Olympians

Josie Gibson and Saskia Clark at the Sydney International Regatta

You've just finished A-Levels and you're considering the next step in your sailing/working life. Do you opt for university? Do you take a gap year? Do you fall straight into work? Or do you take up the long road to the Olympics you always felt you were destined for?

There are so many options available to UK sailors. This is partly thanks to the advent of lottery funding, but also helped by some universities, the University of Southampton being one, which allow students to extend their degrees and spend time training.

For example Josie Gibson, 22, is currently studying Maths at Oxford University while campaigning in the women's 470 class for Athens 2004 with Saskia Clark, 22. "I have always wanted to campaign for the Olympics since the age of seventeen and based my degree around the 2004 games," explained Gibson.

In the past sailors held full-time, though slightly flexible, jobs and sailed in their spare time. However, with more and more money coming into sailing, the number of successful amateur sailors is rapidly diminishing.

Olympic Gold and Silver medallist Ben Ainslie chose a different track to success, he left school to dedicate himself to the Olympic trail. Ainslie's dedication to sailing since then has gained him two medals, and with his transition into big boats, most recently the America's Cup Class, before he opted to return to the Olympic arena, Ainslie looks set to hold a career in sailing for the rest of his life. However, if his funding had run out or had he not won the medals, perhaps this may not have been the case and one wonders whether the approach taken by GBR Challenge's Ian Walker and Finn Gold Medallist Iain Percy is the better one.

Ian Walker graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in geography. Though he didn't achieve a top grade degree, due to his combining much time sailing with a less flexible degree programme, the bit of paper from Cambridge is still enough to give Walker some security. Walker was able to focus on his true passion, in the knowledge that at least he had qualifications to fall back on.

"Having a good education or any secondary skills is very important for being a professional sailor. Most Volvo or America's Cup sailors use their secondary skills a lot. Likely skills are sailmaking, electrical, business/accountancy, public speaking, management/organisational, physiological, IT, languages, engineering, design etc. Having these secondary skills is often as important as any sailing ability in these big projects," explained Walker.

Since then Walker hasn't looked back, sailing in two Olympics (winning two silver medals), and scoring the most desirable job in UK yachting, skipper and sailing manager for the 2003 GBR America's Cup Challenge. "Would I have got the job as GBR Challenge Sailing Manager if Peter Harrison did not believe I had the intellect to carry out a managerial role? Would that have happened if I did not go to school/university or proved it in previous campaigns?" asks Walker rhetorically.

Iain Percy also followed a route through University, studying Economics at Bristol University. On graduating Percy, picked out by Jim Saltonstall then working for the RYA, went straight into the Finn to campaign for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. It wasn't long before he was scoring podium finishes in European and World championships and the next stop was Gold medal at the Sydney Olympics. However there are very few people able to excel in sailing so quickly, and again Percy still has a degree to fall back on.

So the two main paths to success have been completing a degree course and moving straight into sailing from school. And both appear to be equally successful. The problem is - there are only 11 medals available in sailing, and some of these are gender specific. This doesn't leave a lot of room for failure. In other words, if you miss your goal and lose funding, where can you fall back to if you don't have a degree? What of the large number of young sailors already battling for the top spot in each class to represent the UK at the 2004 Athens Olympics - there aren't many spaces compared to the number of athletes competing?

The majority of hopefuls are either already full-time sailors, are studying at university and sailing at every spare opportunity, or on part-time/relaxed university timetables. Rob Wilson, after a disappointing finish the 2000 Olympic Trials, took up a place at Southampton University to study for a Masters degree over two years rather than one to gain qualifications while still attempting to improve his Tornado sailing skills.

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