The Australian Tanks are rolling

by Rob Kothe and the Sail-World Team on 16 May 2012 We interviewed Australian Sailing Team Coach Victor Kovalenko just after the 2000 Olympics, at that time, his Ukrainian accent, was pretty thick and you could almost see the tanks rolling out of the Russian steppes to Western Europe as he said the goal must be to achieve World Domination before the Olympics in your discipline then your chances of winning Gold was much better.

12 years Oz supercoach Victor almost has an Aussie drawl, well maybe that is stretching it but he does say Mate pretty well .

It seems Mat Belcher and Malcolm Page are on the World Domination program with an impressive six wins from six races in their Barcelona 470 Worlds and Tom Slingsby, Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensens tanks are rolling towards Weymouth too. Mind you the Ben Ainslie tank looks pretty intimidating.

However every rolled ankle, broken mast, rule 42 flag and OCS is of course a sober reminder that life and sport are far from certainties. But Australian supporters and we journalists just can't wait for London 2012 now just 74 days away.

Today we have the latest news from the 470's, including the great image taken by Victor, the Finns too and the Laser Radials which are about to start.

Today we have the video of the Farr 400 IchiBan hitting 35 knots on Sydney Harbour last weekend plus news that the Farr 400 is to be distributed in Australia by Vicsail.

While you know we will have a big Sail-World team at the London 2012 Olympic Games, we will be equally well represented in San Francisco at America’s Cup 2013. Between now and then we will cover the AC45’s tour as well as being on the water for the first AC72 launches.

The America’s Cup World Series (ACWS) Venice event is set to kick off later this week with both fleet-racing and match-racing events scheduled for the fleet of wing sail-powered AC45 catamarans. 'I think it’s going to be a fantastic event from an iconic picture—racing in the canals of Venice is gonna be cool,' said James Spithill, Oracle Team USA Spithill’s skipper and the youngest helmsman to have won the America’s Cup.

Interestingly, Spithill will be sparring against Russell Coutts, the newly named tactician, replacing Tom Slingsby, with pressing pre-Olympic duties aboard skipper Darren Bundock’s Oracle Team USA Bundock during this event. Note the lack of US accents in the sailors named from Team USA. Now all we need is a country of origin rule and a sailing friendly Aussie billionaire…

We are just a week out from the big Asia-Pacific Sanctuary Cove International Boat Show, for many companies THE place for their new season product launches. We will have a significant presence; naturally you will find us in the MarineBusiness-World pavilion. We love to hear from you in person, what you like and what you hate about Sail-World. com

BTW Some great stories this week on Sail-World Cruising!. It’s just amazing what Nancy Knudsen finds. She has a very large following world-wide.

Her exclusive interview with Matt Rutherford who sailed solo round the America’s is not to be missed. If you don’t receive Nancy’s weekly newsletter you are missing a lot of great articles and great fun too. You can subscribe on that site or drop us a line at editor(at)sail-world.com