Sail-World.com : Blonde ambition: Ayton, Webb and Wilson
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Blonde ambition: Ayton, Webb and Wilson |
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'Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson. Blondes in a Boat for Qingdao.'
David Ashdown
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Viewing the London’s panorama from the bar at the top of the Hilton on Park Lane hotel – the Oxo Tower, the London Eye, Battersea Power Station with its four huge, dormant chimneys – provokes an irrational sense of ownership. Those who gaze out on the spectacle are, momentarily, lords of all they survey. Or in the case of the three blondes sitting in the window seat, ladies.
You get the feeling, however, that for Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson, the favourites to win the Yngling sailing class at the impending Beijing Olympics, the sense of omnipotence may remain even after they have taken the lift back down to terra firma.
Their record in recent years, which includes victory in the last two world championships, the European title and last year's trial event on the unpredictable Olympic course at Qingdao, has demonstrated their class, technique and collective determination. They are, patently, a dominant force. And yet they are happy – not ecstatic, but happy – to entertain the rather simple image which has been appended to them by the media: 'Three Blondes in a Boat.'
That name, of course, was applied to a different combination at the last Olympics, in Athens, when Ayton and Webb were skippered by Shirley Robertson, who was already an Olympic gold medallist, to a victory in the Yngling class so comprehensive that they were able to take the last day off and watch the British rower Matthew Pinsent earn his fourth Olympic title in company with Messrs Cracknell, Coode and Williams.
By their own admission, they felt like guilty schoolgirls missing class.
Four years on, Ayton – who back then went by the omnipresent sailing nickname of Nipper – has become skipper and she and Webb have recruited the young talent of Wilson, a double medallist at the world youth championships. Enter Pippa the Nipper.
'Pippa ticked all the boxes,' says Ayton. 'She's got blonde hair,' adds Wilson.
It's probably a joke.
full story: www.independent.co.uk
by Mike Rowbottom, The Independent
4:02 AM Sun 20 Jul 2008 GMT
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