British squad for Athens announced

Sailors prepare for Pre-Olympic regatta

With just over a year to go until Athens 2004, Stephen Park, the RYA’s Olympic Manager, yesterday announced the team that will represent Great Britain at the 2003 Pre-Olympic test event in Athens.

This regatta is a full dry-run for the Olympics real next year and will operate out of the Olympic Marina in Athens and use the same race areas.

Only one boat per discipline per country is to compete, and for Team GBR these are:

ISAF ranking in brackets as of 8 May
Laser: Paul Goodison (1)
Europe: Andrea Brewster (43)
470 Male: Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield (4)
470 Female: Christina Bassadone and Catherine Hopson (14)
Yngling: Shirley Robertson, Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb (11)
Star: Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell (4)
49er: Paul Brotherton and Mark Asquith (3)
Finn: Ben Ainslie (5)
Tornado: Leigh MacMillan and Mark Bulkeley (13)
Mistral Female: Natasha Sturges (1)
Mistral Male: TBC following Mistral Europeans

The only real surprises in this line-up are the choice of Leigh MacMillan and Mark Bulkeley over Hugh Styles and Adam May and Andrea Brewster over the more highly ranked Kirsty Bonar or Debbie Winstanley in an otherwise fairly lacklustre group of Europe sailors.

The selection process has been based around two primary regattas: Princess Sofia and Hyeres. The Lasers are the exception as they counted the Athens Eurolymp in place of Princess Sofia. The Yngling and Star selection was based on these two crews being the only World Class Performance standard sailors.

In addition to these sailors who will compete at the event from 14-28 August, there is a squad of training partners. The complete team will fly out on 4 August, with the training partners coming home on the 11th. The regatta squad will then decamp to Cyprus for a couple of days of R & R followed by some team building and event focused training.

The training squad comprises of:

Laser: Mark Howard
Europe: Laura Baldwin
470 Male: Graham Vials and Bevis Field
470 Female: Helena Lucas and Jenny Heeley
Yngling: Cathy Foster, Jane Norris and Annie Lush
49er: Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks
Finn: Andrew Simpson
Tornado: Hugh Styles and Adam May
Mistral Female: Byrony Shaw
Mistral Male: TBC

Park’s stated aim of the pre-Olympic Regatta is to provide a 'Games-like experience' for the sailors. With old hand Olympians Percy, Robertson and Ainslie, their personal goals may be slightly different from this but for sailors just breaking into the top flight the experience will be invaluable.


Andrea Brewster who's recent form has resulted in her selection in the Europe Class

According to Park the Olympic infrastructure in Greece is coming on well, with the massive new Olympic Marina nearing completion. The space being made available for boats in Athens is five times that of Sydney, where Rushcutters Bay was transformed into an Olympic Marina. Rushcutters Bay has now been returned to its previous use as home of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, a yacht marina and public park.

Because of the size of the marina in Athens, it actually takes 20 minutes to walk from the top security entrance to the opposite side, where some of the boats will be kept.

Tornado sailors MacMillan and Bulkeley are really sensing an increased vibe through the British squad as the competition for places is hotting up. “There’s a real buzz in the air now because the Olympics is just a year away”, says MacMillan.

Park exudes a calm and confident appraisal of Team GBR's progress so far. The stated aim for Athens is three Olympic medals for the country. Is this not a little bit of sandbagging considering the success in Sydney, with three Golds and two Silvers The Daily Sail asked? "Our goal for Sydney was three medals," says Park, "it was really a situation where we converted several good results into medal winning positions as the regatta went on. Usually you would expect 30-50% conversion rate, but the sailors just clicked and sailing as a sport ended up accounting for 26% of all British medals won in Sydney".

The Team GBR set up in Athens has been on going for the past couple of years. Apart from the sailors competing in a couple of regattas there last year they also undertook some summer training on the Olympic race course area. This is due to an early-established arrangement with the ENOA sailing club based in Athens, just one kilometre from the Olympic Marina. This has enabled the RYA to base training events right on the Olympic doorstep. It has also allowed the collection of priceless met data. Park will only comment: “we’re quite comfortably ahead of the game in this area”, when it comes to the actual information collated.

You certainly get the feeling that the bar is being raised higher now in team GBR. The sailors have just a few more months to really prove themselves and the RYA is putting the final pieces of it’s support structure in place. Confidence within the camp is there, with an excitement that the final few hurdles are left after months and months of training and competing. You also get the feeling that Park really knows just how tough it is at the top and will certainly not be one to sit back and watch his jockeys fall of the pace.