Younglings

by John Curnow on 8 Aug 2016 Right. Straight into it and I am not out to be Yoda. Maybe more like Mel Brooks’ version. Yet with all the goings on, even more so that Rio has now begun, I wanted to make sure that the efforts of Tom Crockett and Harry Morton got as much attention as I could muster.

They just took out the 29er World Championship at Medemblik in the Netherlands. Nice one, and they did it with a four-point buffer! A spread of conditions from light to serious meant they are the true all-round Champions. Great work lads!!! Sailing on our many and varied waters probably got them used to that.

After the tumultuous times of late, extra-special mention has to be made of Annabelle Davies and Hayley Clark who finished ninth, and in doing so took out the girl’s category. May you not get disheartened by recent events and go on to live whatever nautical dreams you may have.

New gear, soon to be released from Zhik, means these sailors will be able to look like a Universal Soldier and assist with getting on with winning the war out on the racetrack. Of course it is not lost on me that they won’t even know who Jeanne-Claude Van Damme is, so they’ll have to get their parents to explain about the Belgian, who’s acting is nowhere near as good as his martial arts, but probably way better than his facelift. Still, it is probably a mighty job when compared with his co-star, Dolph Lundgren. Perhaps we should instead steer them in the direction of the cult classic, Starship Troopers…

Now talking of Younglings, London 2012 was not a great time for dear old Oz in the historic coliseum, the pool. At the time of writing, Australia has two swimming Gold Medals: one in the 400m Men’s Free and 4 x 100 Women’s Freestyle relay. We had no Swimming Gold Medals in London, so as one commentator said to me, “…things returning to normal. Seems like John Bertrand's emphasis on ‘Team’ above ‘Self’ has Aussie Swimming back on track!” Well yes it does, and JB will be quick to share the love, but it was his baby to get mentoring and some of the greats, like Shane Gould, back in the fold. Nice one JB…

Same commentator also asked the question, “How does that bode for Australian Sailing with no current World Champions in the team?” We’ll see soon enough, me thinks… What is also really interesting is how the Internet/Smart TV coverage of the Rio Olympics is far superior to London 2012. You have some 4500 hours of vision available streaming online, which enables viewers to watch what they want, rather than what TV networks want them to see.

What is supremely interesting is that cost of Channel 7 Premium package for thousands of hours of Olympic coverage is only double that of America's Cup WS 45s, which is four hours of weekend vision from Portsmouth and ahead is Toulon. America's Cup vision content is a tad over priced? Looks a lot like it!

At the time of writing Australia leads with two Gold and a Bronze Medal, ahead of Hungary also with two Golds and USA, South Korea, Japan each with one Gold. Note of course that the USA with a Gold and four Silver leads the total medal count.
Now Rio could not have let Day One of competition go on without a scare. There was a bullet fired at the Media Centre for an Equestrian event. No one was hurt thankfully, but the bullet and shot were heard and the projectile recovered. On the positive side, what about Robert Scheidt? Take a bow does not even do it justice.

Elsewhere you have Comanche taking another scalp and in Cowes, our own Chris Hampton, Sam Haines and Mark Andrews (Scot) come away with a third place in the Gertrude Cup for Etchells. Well done.

Hampton said this of it all, 'One of the interesting challenges of this event is tuning up a different boat every day. We found ourselves moving from boats with stiff masts to soft masts and having to run considerably tighter and softer caps and lowers tensions than the tuning guides would suggest to achieve the requisite sail shape. We tend to get very precious about our own boat, which makes this an interesting experience.”

Keeping it all very Land of Oz for now, it seems we may be on track for 250 boats at Hammo. Well done to the organisers and especially you, all the owners and sailors for making it happen.

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