A novel approach

Toby Heppell looks at the unique way the Dutch are running their Olympic Yngling squad

Most Olympic sailors will tell you that to be successful you need to train and race regularly against other top calibre teams. This has been shown to be the case time and again with sailors who win Olympic medals often coming from a country with one or two other top teams, or having spent time sparing with a foreign training partner of the same top level. But what happens when you do not have this strength in depth and training partners are scarce? The Dutch Sailing Federation has come up with a novel approach.

If you have been following the Olympic Circuit over the past few years you may have noticed the three Dutch Yngling teams attending most of the events are numbered 1, 11 and 111. The very observant may also have noticed the crew in these boats have not stayed the same but rather have been switching between boats - a new system conceived by Yngling coach Maurice Paardenkooper.

“Paardenkooper suggested to the head coach that we should just start from the bottom up,” explains Simon Keijzer of the Dutch Sailing Federation. “So they invited 130 girls to come along and from that day they started training with a whole bunch of them in Majorca and now we have ended up with nine full time professionals.”

Paardenkooper was also a judge for the selection of the ABN AMRO Two crew in 2005 where they used a similar training camp system to find fresh young talent to crew the youth round the world race boat. “This is sort of the same approach as ABN AMRO Two where you have idols on the water and everyone can join in and then they select the people to be on the boat. That is where the idea originated from," Keijzer confirms.

This approach did not cease when the nine girls were selected to be a part of the team. Instead of being teamed up in groups the girls are switched between boats in an attempt to create a sailing team of nine people all of an equal, very high international standard, a system some teams in the America’s Cup, most notably Alinghi also used. In fact the only thing that does not change within the team is the position each respective sailor occupies - a helm will always helm for example. This means within the nine sailors there can be 27 different combinations to choose from.

Not all nine girls are ‘fresh talent’ however. They are mixed with girls who have already experienced success. “From the past team that went to the 2004 Olympics there are two still in this group and they were mixed together with a whole bunch of young talent,” states Keijzer.

You might imagine after a couple of years of racing in the boats the teams would have settled down into natural groups but that is not the point of this, we hesitate to use the word, experiment. “They still rotate for every training and event. Here [in Cascais] they are in configurations they might have been in before, but that is not relevant. All of them have a favourite mix but the coach decides when they sail with whom. It is just like in football when the manager says ‘these are the guys on the bench and these are the guys on the field,” Keijzer continues.

Perhaps this system is indicative of the professional manner of the Dutch team’s approach. As Keijzer comments it was not long ago you bought a boat, went sailing and if you were good you went to the Olympics and if not you didn’t. However, now the commitment needed is significantly higher in terms of both money and time. Today most sailors treat Olympic sailing as a profession and in this respect the Dutch team is no different, their investment requiring a contractual commitment from the sailors themselves. “This is all run by the Federation, so the Federation owns the boats and has a contract with the sailors to sail for, I think, 220 days a year. They are paid for that and everything is organised for them,” says Keijzer.

Just because the Dutch Federation pays for this particular Yngling project, does not prevent others Dutch teams from trying their hand at a Yngling campaign, though clearly it would be hard to contend against three effectively full time boats. Keijzer says if there was team that wanted to do their own campaign it is not something the Federation would discourage. However there is no sign of such a campaign at present.

Clearly there are going to be pros and cons to this system of selection and training. One problem is the Dutch Federation must pay for nine sailors campaigning the Yngling full time. Even though only the top nine girls were selected, some sailors will be less competent than others and the less able sailors may hold back the better sailors as the team is brought up to speed. Keijzer accepts these issues but maintains they are less of a problem short term and more of a significant gain long term. “The worry in the beginning was that you could lose time as you have to get all nine to a certain level, instead of just focussing on three athletes,” he explains. “Obviously it is a trade-off. It takes longer to get all nine on the same level but after that you have nine sailors of the same, very high, international standard.”

The funding issue for the most part relies on being able to communicate the importance of a strong team rather than one strong boat effectively. As Keijzer explains going to your national Olympic Committee and explaining you have two Olympic standard sailors but you would like to pay an additional seven people to be full time is bound to elicit some growls from those holding the purse strings. “You have to grant [the coaches} the allowance to get the whole team onto the same level. The Federation and National Olympic Committee need to understand that and believe in it,” he says.

Of course where a system creates problems in one area it can also solve them in others. The potential benefits of this highly egalitarian team approach are difficult to measure at present as, at least in Olympic terms, it is such a new concept. One particular advantage Keijzer points out is the total self sufficiency this system creates within a single country. “The nice thing is the closer that you get to the Games the more difficult it will be to find training partners on a high level. Going into the Olympic Games next year we will keep the three boats with nine girls working on it, we do not need any foreign sparring partners or anything - everything is in-house.”

It is worth taking a moment to consider the actual benefit of this approach. Although the Dutch Federation has effectively engineered its own strength in depth in one class, to view this system as an absolute solution versus the need to train against the rest of the international fleet could be naive and incredibly risky. The reason finding as many and as varied training partners as possible is so generally accepted is that Olympic sailing is a sport where developments can occur rapidly. Conducting solitary in-house racing where all three Ynglings teams are at the same pace is fine, but not if they are off the pace compared to other international team. Still competing in international regattas throughout the year soon make it clear if the girls are uncompetitive. “In the beginning you might think we would struggle but if you look at the results after the Olympics it is clearly not a problem. We were training all winter with those nine girls and when we took them to compete with other countries like Monica Azon etc at Championships they were not way ahead and they had not developed something we missed,” Keijzer continues.

For many dinghy sailors this concept may feel like an alien way of sailing. Specifically some would argue that sailing, especially in smaller boats were you are working with one or two individuals out on the race-track, is a sport where you should choose who you sail with and not have them chosen for you. What is important to keep in mind, however, is the selection of teams to race together is not necessarily specific to the Dutch. Although the Dutch Federation has taken a more visible role in saying who sails with whom many other federations will suggest a certain sailor would be better off with another sailor and given that most sailors are paid by their Federations, this ‘suggestion’ is one most would be unwise to ignore. Still entering into a relationship as intensive as an Olympic duo or trio, it would seem wise for the individual involved to pick themselves rather than be picked. The advantages in having a strong bond of friendship both on and off the water are clear to see.

The strict nature of the Dutch programme is not simply limited to the choice of who sails with whom. “The way it is in this project is almost like a military operation. It is not totally like that, but it is getting close,” admits Keijzer. “Before this I worked in football for two years and it is similar to that. In football you are there at nine and you are not late and you sit at the table until the manager says enjoy your meal and then you eat. That is the way it is,” he adds.

Of course eventually a team will have to be picked to represent the country not only at the Olympic Games themselves but also at the, now fast approaching, Pre-Olympics, where only one boat per class per country can attend. Last year one of the Dutch Ynglings won the Olympic Test Event (effectively the Pre-Pre-Olympics), though multiple boats were allowed at that.

So will this team be going to the Pre-Olympics later this year? “I do not know for sure, but if Paardenkooper stays close to the concept of this project he would select a different three people to go. You do not want the same three people to go again, that does not benefit the whole project,” explains Keijzer. He adds that although no date has been decided on to select the Olympic representatives the decision will have to be made before 10 June 2008, the date by which Olympic entries must officially be registered.

At ISAF ISAF Sailing World Championships in Cascais, the trio of Mandy Mulder, Annemieke Bes and Floortje Hendriksen finished fourth – four points off bronze, while the line-ups of Renée Groeneveld, Brechtje Van Der Werf and Marije Kampen and Janneke Hin, Marije Faber and Petronella De Jong were 13th and 18th respectively. This represents a radical improvement over this time last Olympic cycle where Dutch Ynglings were 19th and 30th at the 2003 ISAF World Sailing Championships in Cadiz, but still just short of the podium. It would seem the system is an improvement but as Keijzer says: “The nice thing of course is in the end, in Beijing we will see whether the system has worked.”