Ian Walker

Ed Gorman talked to the double Silver medallist - and madforsailing diary writer!

The secret to Ian Walker and Mark Covell's success in winning a silver medal in the Star class, was the way they approached the Games mentally. In the run-up things were going badly for the pair and it seemed to have been winding them up. It was all becoming too intense, as Walker explained to madforsailing shortly after finishing the final race of the series, when they missed the gold by one point.

"If you had spoken to us three weeks ago, I'd have said we hadn't a cat in hell's chance," he said. "Everything we'd done had gone badly in training, the harder we worked the worse we seemed to go. In nearly every tuning run we did with foreign teams we seemed to go badly, and then Mark burned his shoulder in the shower." That incident lost the pair a full week's sailing.

They decided to call a "mini-crisis" meeting, bringing in the RYA Keelboat Coach, Bill Edgerton and the new Secretary General, Rod Carr. It was a chance to reassess and it proved a turning point. "We just laid all our cards on the table and we said 'right, the only way we are going to do any good is by being relaxed and sailing well and forgetting about everything.' We didn't even worry about which sails we used, we just pulled the first ones out and got on with it."

The notable feature of Walker and Covell's performance was how relaxed they seemed on the water. They were clearly enjoying themselves and Walker said a number of times that he never felt a twinge of nerves, even going into the last race. The meeting seemed to have re-established in his own mind that he was going into the Games as an underdog, an approach which he much prefers to the favouritism he and John Merricks endured in 470s in Savannah. And it worked.

"We said whatever happens we are going to enjoy it and not fall out," added Walker. "I can honestly say we have not had any nerves all week - even today in the last race we were sailing round the course laughing about it almost." I asked them about being an underdog, something which given their pre-Games results was becoming a bit far-fetched. "It's always nice for people to expect you to do nothing and you do well," said Walker. "I did that in International 14s and we've done that in Stars. I know from 470s what the other situation is like, and I said to Mark on the way in from the race course that I didn't really enjoy Savannah because there was so much pressure and we were under the cosh. Yet here all along we kept saying 'we're enjoying this' and maybe that was the key."
Walker has taken an enormous amount of encouragement from the way he and Covell have progressed in the Star, a class which normally rewards only those who spend years working away at it. "The best thing when things go well is that it means everything you've done has been the right decision and all the sacrifices you've made have been worth it. We spent lots and lots of hours plugging up and down in the boat, wondering whether we had learnt anything. And sometimes it felt like we were banging our heads against a brick wall, but something must have been filtering in." he said.

The partnership between the two has clearly been a great success, and Walker again spoke of his admiration for Covell - who dislocated his knee in May last year while "straight-legging" upwind. Walker said Covell had used this technique for the first time since he injured himself during two key races on Friday, the day when their medal credentials were established. "None of the other crews do it and it gave us a little more righting moment - he saved it until now and no other crew tries harder. I couldn't have asked for any more. I kept saying 'stop it you're going to break your knees' and he said 'it's alright'", Walker added. And it was.