Hugh Styles interview

Ed Gorman interrogates Britain's Tornado hope on his plans and prospects for Athens

Ed Gorman talks to Tornado skipper Hugh Styles who, together with crew Adam May, is one the first to set out his stall for gold at Athens 2004. The pair recently captured the silver medal in the new format boat at the class European championships on Lake Silvaplana in Switzerland and go full time from this winter.

madforsailing: Hugh, almost exactly a year ago you were in bronze medal position after six races at the Sydney Games only for it to all go horribly wrong on that infamous Thursday when an OCS and a DSQ wrecked your medal hopes, as you slumped to sixth overall. How hard has it been for you to come to terms with that experience?

Hugh Styles: It's been pretty difficult based on the fact that we reckoned we've got some unfinished business. We were a team that got together pretty late in the build-up to the Games. Just over a year before Sydney we hadn't sailed together before and Adam hadn't sailed a cat, so we reckoned we did pretty well from coming nowhere to coming eighth at the worlds before the Games in six months and then top-five, top-six material in a good regatta. We knew we had the potential in a good regatta to clinch it, but we were disappointed we didn't quite manage to get it together.

What did you take away from Rushcutter's Bay then?

I think the positives we've taken away from it are just that a regatta is a long process and it's about a number of nice results and consistency is king. We were in bronze medal position and looking sweet and a little bit of shakiness on one day and unfortunately that was it. We realise we don't have to do anything flash - we've just got to keep plugging away. We know we're fast and we know we've got the skills and the ability to get ourselves in winning opportunities. It's just a case of letting it all happen and not trying too hard. We're pretty focussed and single-minded but you can try too hard.

You have just won the silver medal at the Europeans in the new boat (behind Olympic gold medallists Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher of Austria). When did you both decide that you were going to go for Athens?

We had a bit of a break after the Games. I suppose it was early to mid-November last year. We did a de-brief and I rang Adam and said this is where I feel we're at and this is what I want to do. Obviously it hadn't gone the best for us in Sydney but we had learned a load of lessons there and I told Adam I felt he was the right man and that, as a team, we could be the best in the world.

Since then you've been campaigning at half strength if you like, with Adam still working for British Aerospace. But he is due to take a long sabbatical from this winter right up to the Games. So what are your goals over this long build-up phase to 2004 and how are you going to pace yourselves to peak at the right time?

I think we want to try and stamp our authority on the class within the next 18 months - it's important to do that with the Olympic trials 18 months down the line. Our time-scaling is quite tight really in respect of keeping ourselves on the boil. There's a lot of technical development stuff going on with the class and with developing the boat. So almost we haven't got time to worry about getting stale because we're just trying to race on with developing the boat, developing new kit and improving ourselves. We've got lots of sail development and lots of other practical development to do, so we are fully deep in thought most of the time.

What are you doing different now that you weren't doing in Sydney?

We were still learning heaps at that stage. We're now in a position where we understand far more about the boat technically and we've put loads more time in on the water and so we're more on auto-pilot on actually sailing the boat and can be far more heads out of the boat and more racing-minded, as opposed to boatspeed first and then the racing.

How does it work between you?

Communication is pretty key. Adam is mainsheet trimmer and feeding as much information as he can in. When it's light winds and we're both sitting on the boat, he's pretty much the brains and the organisation and decision-maker on tactics and strategy upwind. Downwind, it's more my ball game because Adam is more into kite trimming. In the breeze, twin-wiring, his deal is mainsheet trimming and most of the tactical stuff reverts to me. Obviously I have final say in everything but in the lighter stuff he's able to give me more feel.

Are there any major issues about how you sail the new configuration which sounds a real handful at times? You've got a bigger jib and main and a new 25sq metre asymmetric to handle.

Upwind no. But downwind the kite adds a whole new dimension to the boat. It's much more exciting to sail for me for sure. Much more of an adrenalin rush and much more powered-up so you have to be pretty careful and pretty aware of the angles you're sailing because the boat powers up so quickly. If you try to sail a little bit too high when you're going downwind, it's pretty easy to dig the leeward bow in and the boat parks up - in our training practice we've had a few nasty wipeouts when we tripped over the front of the boat. The tactics haven't changed much from when we were sailing wild but now we have a spinnaker we are flying a hull a lot earlier, so things like sailing in bands of pressure are really, really crucial. Quite often you're more interested in where the bands of pressure
are and sailing those, than you are in the fleet.

So when are you both on the wire?

Upwind we're both on the wire in eight - maybe nine knots. Downwind we don't really twin-wire unless it's really flat water in about 18 knots. But in 13-14 knots downwind, Adam's single-wiring and we're just trying to power the boat up.

What are your short-term objectives?

The main thing is the next worlds in September next year in Martha's Vineyard. We need to put ourselves in a position to win that regatta.

Finally, Hugh, tell us how important winning gold in Athens is to you.

It's vital. This is the biggest...this is my life for as long as I can remember and there is nothing that's going to stop me from doing it.

Thanks a lot and best of luck to you both.