Christmas time for Leroy

We talk to women's no1 match racer Claire Leroy about her team and her discipline within the sport going Olympic

While our personal view is that women's match racing is a rotten choice for the Olympics in 2012, this was not a view to be expressed this last weekend down at Queen Mary Sailing Club for the women's event of the RYA Winter Challenge.

After a blustery three days of sailing, the event was won by the race favourite and perennial ISAF World No1 women's match racer Claire Leroy and her team from France.

Queen Mary may lack the glamour of Bermuda or Brazil, but for match racers, both men and women, the Winter Challenge has a great format, held over weekends starting in December with the winners of each round ending up in the final taking place this year on 7-9 March. The series is rare in being a match racing event held over the winter months in Northern Europe and it is the only Grade Two event to be hosted in the UK at present (there are no Grade Ones). With David Campbell-James running the show it has developed a great reputation among international competitors and so it is a great shame that JPMorgan withdrew their support of the event at such a late stage the organisers were unable to find backing for it this season. We suspect a conversation should be happening with the likes of BMW to ensure the event is put back on to a firm financial footing for 2008-9.

We digress...



For LeRoy, 27, winning this event made up for being pipped at the post by Finnish sailor Silja Lehtinen and her team last year, both sailors ending up in the final once again this year.

"We love to come here," Leroy told thedailysail. "It is not really beautiful, but every time we have good conditions and to have the opportunity to sail for a long period over winter it is very cool. We like to come here and we you know it is a good organisation because we don’t have to wait and it runs smoothly."

While the ISAF's decision to introduce women's match racing into the Olympics may have caused grumbling in many quarters, for Leroy it is like Christmas, or perhaps more accurately, a gamble that has finally paid off.

"I started in match racing because they [the FFV, France's national authority] said perhaps it will be in the Olympics and in France there is good development for the match racing. When I started I loved it - it was fun, very exciting, you have to learn the rules and think how the umpires make the decisions. So I liked that." That was back in 2001. However then the Yngling was chosen... Leroy says she tried that in 2003 but admits it was not very exciting. "I don’t like the boat very much and it is not great fun. It was too much of a compromise. So I went back to match racing."

As Sebastien Col described to us last year (read our interview with him here), match race training in France is reasonably sophisticated with four bases, the three most widely used by Claire Leroy and her team being at Pornichet, Quiberon on the Atlantic coast and Leroy's native St Quay-Portrieux on the north coast.

France also has a profound depth in match racing experience and it comes as little surprise that gunning for Ian Williams' position at the top of men's ranking is Frenchman Mattieu Richard. Leroy's long term coach was ex-America's Cup helm Marc Bouet who organises match race training on behalf of the French federation. Shortly before coming to Queen Mary Leroy and her team had been out training with the male French match racing squad, including Col, with Emirates Team New Zealand/BMW Oracle Racing Cup veteran Bertrand Pace behind the megaphone. "It was really fun with Bertrand because when we missed something or when we didn’t kill him or we gave him an opportunity he was shouting at us. That was fun! We had a good exchange with the guys," says Leroy.

Apart losing the event in the UK last year, 2007 otherwise could not have been a better year for LeRoy and her team. They went on to win the women's Grade One event in Calpe but the crowning moment of the year was when the ISAF Women's March Racing World Championship was held in her home town of St Quay Portrieux.

Leroy grew up sailing there with her brother as part of a family with a long lineage of sailors dating back to her great-grandfather who was a captain. There, she says, she briefly sailed Oppies, but rapidly moved into doublehanders, first a L'Equipe dinghy, then the 420 and 470. She moved to Nantes prior to studying biology at university and going on to business school, but still has strong ties with St Quay Portrieux and the local region.

Thankfully playing in front of a home crowd, Leroy won the Worlds. "If I didn’t win that one it would have been hard to win the others!" she admits. "Just after with the other part of the team we went to the Europeans in Vigo a few days after and we won again! It was an incredible August for us. We were really happy with that."

The end of a top season saw Leroy pick up the ISAF Rolex Sailor of the Year award.

"We try to do the same this year," she says. "I think it will be hard, but if we can be in the final of the Worlds and the Europeans this year it will be a good season for us."

This year the season is a short one with the Women's Worlds to be held in Auckland in early April. Leroy says she and her team will head down there one month in advance to compete at the New Zealand Nationals and a Grade One in Sydney prior to the Worlds. Back in Europe she plans to compete at the Lysekil Woemn's Match Race in Sweden in August.



The Olympics

After a great 2007 and still currently heading the ISAF women's match race ranking, the news of her sport becoming an Olympic discipline provides Leroy with a welcome new goal.

"It is a really good victory for all the women sailors who were working on it, because we tried to convince a lot of people," she says. "So we won this thing - it is really good. We are not too old so we want to do the next Olympics in match racing, so we are waiting to see how it will be organised."

And herein lies the problem. Does the class become like the Soling was, with a pre-defined boat? Leroy thinks this is a bad idea. "I don’t want this because if that happens the actual circuit will die and it is not good for women’s sailing. The thing is to try and find a solution to develop this circuit and try to have some connection with that. It is hard to find a good solution."

Obviously the danger is that if ISAF announce this year that in 2012 the women's match racing will be carried out in say J/22s then those looking to be competitive will immediately have to go out and buy not one but two boats. Suddenly women's match racing will be the most expensive event in Olympic sailing, making it hard for less well funded nations to compete, something which no one wants. As Leroy points out this will also be a different sport - women's match racing in J/22s, rather than just women's match racing, where familiarity with the boat and its set-up are not key factors.

Leroy says she would prefer a boat that ideally no one has had time in prior to the Games and with competitors rotating to a different boat each day during the regatta as happens at circuit match racing events she sails in at present.

"To know six months before the Olympic Games it will be this boat because there has been a draw to choose it will be really good because we keep the interest and if we have this boat for this Olympics it can change for the next time. So it won’t be a big advantage for any nation. I don’t know what is the best. If we choose a boat now then a nation like Brazil and poor countries, it will be like the Yngling now. If we want to change the mentality and protect the circuit we have to think differently."

So would this draw be between the existing fleets of match racing boats such as the Tour's own 40 footers, the DS37s they sail in Scandinavia, the RYA's own J/80s or the IODs they sail in Bermuda or the J/22 popular in the US or some of the other bespoke match race boats they use at events in the Med? Is six months a suitable time period before the Games to make the announcement? Surely even six months out the bigger teams will go in and buy a fleet of boats to train in.

We suspect that the only solution will be for ISAF to choose an entirely new design of boat and to fund the building of a new fleet which will only hit the water for the first time within months of the Olympiad with strict rules about the date teams can start practicing in them.

"To have match racing in the Olympics will cause it to grow and I think the sport can have a big development all over the world - not just in European countries but in Oceania and in South America," continues Leroy. "After that I don’t know how they will organise it, because it is important to keep this circuit and develop it and to try and have a world tour like the men have. I think it will change a lot of things. Probably the women can be more professional, but we have to wait and see will happen."

Another important decision is on the size of boat and this is likely to be determined by crew numbers. Leroy thinks it would be best to have a crew of four. "With four people you can have a big boat and to make a show. To use a small boat like a Yngling, the boat we had at the Europeans, it is like a game, playschool."

Other sailing

If the plan stays as it is for 2012 then it seems that Leroy will have the next four years clearly mapped out for her. However even now her sailing has diversified. She has been a regular competitor on the Tour de France a la Voile, sailing with a team from her native department [state/county] in France of Cote d'Armor. To give an indication of how sailing works in France, the Cote d'Armor department uses the Tour Voile as an opportunity not only to promote their region throughout France, but also to train up their young sailors. They have 22 in their team including six managers, Leroy being one. They have coaches in Leroy says she has learned a lot about sailing from this.

However this year her Tour Voile campaign will be slightly different as Leroy says she has the funding for her own women's team. "We have the budget but now we have to find extra money because we’d like to have a European crew. I would like to have a mix of European and French. I think there is more knowledge and a mix could be profitable," she says.

While there was a small possibility of her sailing as part of the team of Ernesto Bertarelli's sister Donna on the Decision 35 catamaran circuit in Switzerland, she hasn't done this but says four of her team have. "I was too busy and not really interested in it, because it is really hard boat and we need to learn a lot of things. To combine this project with my projects and my work is too much. I prefer to do Mumm 30s and come here in England to make some races because the level is more international. The boats in Switzerland are good because you have a good sensation, but it is not an important thing for me."

Since graduating in Nantes, Leroy is professionally a management consultant but has a special arrangement with her employer allowing her to spend 70 days out fo the office, enabling her to carry out her extensive sailing program. This limits how many events she and her Team Ideactor crew, regularly including Ingrid Cerrato (currently away having a baby), Ophelie Theron, Elodie Bertrand and Marie Riou can compete in. Obviously with women's match racing going Olympic it is likely she will have to become fully professional.

Beyond match racing Leroy says she would love to have the opportunity sail in one of the top crewed events such as the America's Cup or the Volvo Ocean Race.

Leroy's strengths are clearly that she has been an enthusiastic sailor pretty much all her life and has the strong support of the match racing side of the French Federation behind her, having worked with some of the best coaches available. She also has a well bonded team and one suspects that her training in business studies will have given her certain sound managerial skills other teams might lack.