Who will be the chosen one?

The Artemis Offshore Academy's John Thorn looks back on their first season

This week we expect the lucky individual to be announced who has won the Artemis Offshore Academy scholarship, thereby getting the ticket to enter this year’s La Solitaire du Figaro, with a fully-funded campaign backed by the Edinburgh-based investment house.

For the last months, the top eight from the Artemis Offshore Academy have been down in the south of France training at Franck Citeau’s facility in La Grande Motte. The Academy squad has comprised Phil Sharp, Oliver Young, Sam Goodchild, Nick Cherry, Nigel King, Simon Hiscocks and Nick Houchin – a strong mix of Route du Rhum Class 40 winners, Olympic medallists and British match racing champions. Sadly former Mini sailor Ollie Bond had to drop out due to injury.

The British squad members have been developing their skills alongside several leading lights of the French Figaro and shorthanded offshore scene including the likes of DCNS’ Christopher Pratt, Arthur Levaillant, Jean-Pierre Nicol, Laurent Pellecuer, Nicolas Berenger and Marc Emig. For the Brits a more compact training camp has been taking place alongside this for the Minis where the Artemis academy’s Pip Hare (more on her shortly) and Becky Scott have been participating, the latter campaigning Artemis’ own Mini which previously Ollie Bond raced in the 2009 Mini Transat.

With The Decision looming, so over the last weeks the squad has been undertaking a mix of short, medium and long distance races aboard the Academy’s four Figaro Beneteau 2 32 footers (joined at the start of March by a fifth – the one Jonny Malbon campaigned last year).

“We are calling them indicator races, in much the same way as the RYA use races as indicators of performance, but not an absolutely a ‘first past the post’ series,” explains the Artemis Offshore Academy’s John Thorn, making the comparison with Skandia Team GBR’s Olympic selection process. “We have weighted those indicator races so the shorter races are x1, whereas the longer 24+ hour races carry a weighting of x5.”

We still haven’t seen the final results of these races. According to Sam Goodchild’s blog, he was leading the inshore series while Phil Sharp was ahead in the offshores...until the final long distance race down to Spain and back that finished last week, in which he finished two places ahead of Sharp enabling him to claim victory overall in the racing series among the Brits. This will bode well for the former RYA National Match Racing Youth Champion, however, as Thorn stresses, the race results are only a component of what the selectors will use to decide The Chosen One.

“I think it will be down to three or four people from our eight original starters,” states Thorn. “While fortunately it won’t be my decision, I think the selecting board will certainly find it an interesting meeting when they do the final selection.” This meeting is due to take place tomorrow. The three in the running we believe to be Sharp, Goodchild and three time RYA National Match Racing champion, Nick Cherry.

Typically during training in La Grande Motte there have generally been 12 Figaros out, including the four/five Artemis academy boats and the British squad have won races in the inshores and come top three or four in the medium and long distance races. Bear in mind this is against strong French competition that includes podium placers in previous Solitaire du Figaros.

“The great thing from our point of view - from Artemis and the squad’s point of view - is that we really do feel as if we are making progress and we are on the pace,” says Thorn. “I’m not saying that means we’ll do anything more than can be reasonably expected of rookies in the Solitaire, but we are not disappointed of where we are right now.”

So if race results are not the be-all and end-all – what else will form part of the equation? According to Thorn, the candidate will have to have reached a minimum level of physical fitness, they must have passed their RYA Yachtsmaster Offshore and they also have to have sailed at least 30 hours in a solo offshore race – which they all have.

“Then we have other elements such as putting together a credible sponsor proposal and undertaken social media involvement – blogs, Twitter, etc,” says Thorn. Certainly Cherry and Goodchild have been prolific in the latter. They also have to have picked up enough French so that they can interpret a weather forecast, broadcast and receive positions, so that they can be understood over the airwaves.

They also have had to take part in 75% of the training and we understand that three of the original eight have dropped out of the running due to this – through business or family commitments back home. This perhaps highlights a small shortcoming of the scheme: While the Artemis Offshore Academy is unquestionably the most positive step ever to have been made in the development of British shorthanded offshore racing, throughout their training time academy members have had their costs covered but haven’t been salaried. This inevitably limits it to those who are inherently well-off or the footloose and fancy-free without mortgages, families, businesses, etc. One wonders whether this doesn’t eliminate some potential candidates who might better fulfil the academy’s primary remit of identifying and nurturing a future British Vendee Globe winner?

The counter argument is of course that those taking part in the academy have to be hungry, eager and show commitment.

“We hope and we still hope that the element of cash shouldn’t be a barrier which is why we haven’t made it a full time training program, but only a 50-70% training program,” says Thorn. “We are certainly going to offer employment opportunities on the corporate side to any of the guys who need it. We are flexible with the time as much as we can be. But the training program in La Grande Motte really dictates a lot of the time commitment because we have a lot of specialists down there - weather specialists from the Meteo France, physiotherapists, physical trainers, psychologists, etc. So it is quite hard for them to take time off during the period in La Grande Motte. But as the summer progresses they will have more time to balance the books with work and other commitments.”

Thorn says they were pleased with this first crop that has passed through Academy, particularly their diverse backgrounds. “They excel in different ways and I think that is the strength of the group - they have brought different skills to the table, each has benefitted from another, so together they have progressed. It has been a quid pro quo arrangement which I think has worked quite well.”

For the next round of recruits, Thorn believes that they will have more of the same, with once again a cull following the application stage in August, followed my more trials in Weymouth (read more about this here) to determine the final 8-12 who will take part in the training. “I think we’ll look for the same criteria. I am hoping that we will still be able to carry on with some of the guys we have already got, so they will want to stay on for another year. That way we will have rolling continuity so that those who have been involved with the program for a period of time already will then share and bring on the next group, etc. There will be a rolling change-over of individuals.” Thorn says that they have also being keeping detailed records of data and what they have learned this season, so that this can be used and subsequently developed by future Academy members.

We hope that among the next recruits will be more ex-Olympic squad sailors.

In terms of the training Thorn says they have learned a lot this year and will follow up their announcement of this year’s winner with a review of the last months, attempting to identify what can be improved. “In terms of the big picture, the balance between training in the UK and in France, I think that has worked. It is just some fine tuning in terms of timing and making the most of the program and the time of year and the weather that is prevailing, etc. There will be a slight change of emphasis here and there rather than a complete change of content.”

For example more of the preparation work and tuning on the boats would be done in the UK rather than in France. However Thorn is delighted with the program laid on by Franck Citeau in La Grande Motte. “The French program has been outstanding - the French coaches, the French welcome, the facilities – they have been great and we couldn’t have asked for better in terms of hospitality and welcome. The French sailors have adopted us. There is still pretty intense competition out on the water, but when it comes to debriefs people share and talk openly, they talk about technique, differences in opinion and that really works.”

Aside from being keen to internationalise what is essentially a very French discipline, the French Figaro sailors in La Grande Motte were happy to involve the squad as they felt they might benefit from some fresh insight. “Our greatest fear was that the French guys would be over there and we’d be over here, but that hasn’t happened.”

A surprise, perhaps, has been the relatively high degree of carnage. Before Christmas one of the Academy’s Figaros suffered a dismasting, which is believed to have been due to a previous incident. There have also been some particularly grisly collisions. Thorn maintains these have been less due to newbie solo sailor error but rather the high level of competition. “I have been involved in race training for many years now and I know that when you are training, when you are pushing you make mistakes – it is inevitable. So we have broken one or two things, we have had a few comings together, but then so have the French. One ended up on the rocks the other day, so it is not just us. Everyone is pushing hard down there and things are getting broken.”

With the Academy up and running, what is needed now is the development of a home-grown Figaro circuit in the UK and the opportunity to build some UK media interest in the class. This will start this year with the UK Figaro Nationals due to take place over 13-16 June in Weymouth; an event which will feature the Academy boats, including the winner, along with Nigel King and Conrad Humphreys who are each fielding their own Figaro campaigns this season and any French sailors who wish to come over.