Mark Covell

Britain's Star representative talked to madforsailing after Tuesday's racing

After their great escape on Day 10, we got hold of Mark Covell to see how he was enjoying the Olympic experience.
mfs - This is your first Olympics, is it what you expected?

MC - No, not really. Everyone told me that no matter how much preparation you do, no matter how much you try to take the tension out of it, it will always seem like the Olympics. With the media hype, the village, you cannot make it feel like another regatta, which is your aim - but for me it has just felt like another regatta. I’ve been to World Championships where I’ve been more nervous. I was pretty nervous before the first race, but everything else seems normal. The fact that there are familiar faces everywhere, journalists that I know, living with the team, working with our coaches who we’ve been with all year. Nothing‘s different. We came here last year, which was a big thing just after the worlds. Obviously the hype is here, but it’s outside our environment and we’re doing a good job keeping it there.

mfs - You’re half way through the regatta now, how difficult has it been?

MC - Well, we’ve had good days and we’ve had bad days. The first day was a good day, even though the second race was frustrating because we threw away some valuable points. All along we’d learnt from the first week’s sailing in the other fleets that a lot of people had been punished for being too conservative. I guess in the second race we should have consolidated some good places, rather than attacking too much - so that was frustrating. So there have been high points and low points. We’re half way through and it’s very obvious that you can have some really bad races. It’s all too easy, you really feel that you’re sailing with a noose around your neck and at any time you feel that that noose can tighten, and you’d be out of the medals. I can see that happening to some of the other competitors, and it’s up to us to keep fighting like we did today.

mfs - Has seeing some of your team mates doing so well, helped to spur you on?

MC - Absolutely, especially Ian and Simon, who have got hard work and resilience written all over their success. I felt very sorry for the Soling lads when their campaign fell so flat after, what on paper, seemed like a wonderful preparation - it seemed that fate really went against them. I certainly feel that we could be in either of those positions.

mfs - How difficult is it for you, being away from your family, especially Emily and Tracey (daughter and wife)?

MC - It’s something that I’ve known about for a long time and it’s something that I always knew was going to be hard. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, up until the point where we decided to relax going into the regatta and suddenly I had a little more time on my hands and then I got very, very homesick. But Tracey has been sending me videos and tapes, she's been good at videoing day-to-day life, and I’ve spoken to them a lot. I can see the end of it too, which helps.

mfs - How do you feel going into the second half of the regatta?

MC - It could go either way, but at the beginning of the regatta I didn’t know how we would go, we need to rely on our strengths. It’s given me confidence in our strengths, and we know that we can fall back on them, so I do feel more confident that we can fight our way back from a bad result.

mfs - Is there anyone out there on the race course who you fear?

MC - Well, Torben Grael is having a really good regatta, he is fast in all conditions, but Mark Reynolds, who up until now has seemed very on top on his game, he isn’t having a great time. Colin Beashel doesn’t seem as invincible as he did this time last year, showing that other people are getting their heads round the Sydney conditions.

mfs - Good luck tomorrow!