Chinese media sit down with ISAF CEO - Part 2

by ISAF on 26 Sep 2015 The second part of ISAF CEO, Peter Sowrey's chat with the Chinese media at ISAF Sailing World Cup Qingdao...

From Chinese inspirations to the next steps of ISAF...

Do you know any famous Chinese sailors?

I know a very famous Chinese sailor who actually lives down the road from me in Southampton. Lijia Xu is a great inspiration for everyone in sailing. If you've never seen her speech from when she won the ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year award in 2012, you need to. It was the most beautiful speech I think I have ever seen from sailing. Even a grown man, I found myself crying.

She talked about her whole journey from having certain disablements to going out and winning gold. It's a beautiful story and one of my favourite in sailing, in fact.

Xu's speech is available to view below from 26:43.



In the 2008 Olympics, seven years after, what improvements have been made by Chinese sailors?

I was meeting with some members of the IOC the other day and we were talking about the Volvo Ocean Race and the Dongfeng boat and how well that boat had done.

It took people who had not really sailed before and made them into heroes. That's also a very beautiful story. One of the things we're trying to do is build the legacy of each Olympics.

The great thing here is we are using the Olympic venue and it's still very active and important. It's important for the Olympic vision in that we tie in the whole future of sailing and generations.

We want generations of sailors to grow up through the Youth Worlds, into the Olympics and then into the likes of the Volvo Ocean Race, America's Cup or Vendee Globe. There's a journey there.

The Chinese team did very well at the Volvo Ocean Race and there's some brilliant stories coming from that team from guys who have never sailed before to being out in the middle of the Atlantic in heavy winds and big seas, almost fighting for their lives. It's a great story for the Chinese and it's probably the best story that came out of the Volvo Ocean Race.

As CEO you are a very important person who has to make some very important decisions. Since your appointment as CEO, what will you do to develop ISAF?

We are going to change the name, we are going to get rid of ISAF and just go to World Sailing from November.

It's going to be World Sailing - A Sport for Life.

For me I've come in, there's a great team and we've been thinking about how we take World Sailing into a new light and a new vision.

I have a nine year daughter who sails but how do I make sure she's sailing when she's 45, 55. I'm 52 years old and I'm still sailing. ISAF's President Carlo Croce is still sailing so it's a sport for life.

That theme is very important for our thinking and our branding for sailing for the future. We want to capture the young child whether it's a girl or boy and we also want to capture the disabled children and get them in the water. It's not just able bodied sailing, every single person needs to get out on the water to sail.

We want people to have a very secure future in sailing.

I took this job because I'm passionate about sailing. My nine year old sits on her iPhone all day and I miss this whole family days out on the water thing and for me I want to rebuild that and that's part of our transformation.

We're going to connect Olympic sailing to the rest of sailing. At the moment ISAF today is too focused on the Olympics. The Olympics is very important to us, because it's at the core of all of our sailing. Without the Olympics there would be no funding and we wouldn't be able to survive.

ISAF is the governing body and we're going to act as the governing body from end to end of the sport. Nurturing from youth to heroes and the journey in between.