At least 10 sailors expected to be named Monday in NZ Olympic Team

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com NZL on 12 Mar 2016 On Monday, Yachting New Zealand is expected to name at least 10 sailors to compete in five events at the 2016 Olympic Regatta in Rio de Janeiro from August 5-21, 2016.

New Zealand was one of only three countries to qualify in all ten events at the first round of three rounds of qualifying at the 2014 ISAF World Championships in Santander, Spain in September 2014.

Leading the Kiwi line-up will be the World Champion 49er crew of Peter Burling and Blair Tuke, who are at very short odds indeed to win the Olympic Gold medal in the two-man skiff event.

Also, expected to be waved aboard the Rio 2016 bus will be the 2012 Olympic Gold medallists in the Women’s 470 class, Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie.

Expected to be confirmed are the 49erFX crew of Alex Maloney and Molly Meech. The 49erFX Women’s skiff will be sailed as for the first time at the 2016 Olympics, and Maloney and Meech were the first world champions in the class. While they have not achieved the same giddy heights since 2013, they have certainly put in the hours and placed in the top echelon of competitors in the class since that regatta.

By virtue of a second place and Silver Medal in the 470 Worlds, last month in Argentina, the Men's crew of Paul Snow-Hansen and Dan Willcox can also expect to be named. That result was a big lift in performance from the New Zealand crew, possibly aided by a change of coach for the Worlds in Argentina.

Before the 2016 Worlds, the Kiwi crew had shown flashes of form but had been unable to put together a strong overall performance. They finished 20th overall at the 2015 Olympic Test Regatta after having to sit out a day of racing on doctor's orders and were no doubt affected in the rest of the regatta by the same malaise.

They were 12th on the 2015 Worlds in Haifa, Israel - failing to make the cut for the Medal Race. They performed well in the qualifying rounds but struggled when the quality of the fleet improved once they started sailing in the Gold fleet. In the 2016 Worlds, it was a different story, with only one place outside the top four in the last half of the regatta, including two race wins in the Gold fleet racing - that's a big improvement from the 2015 Worlds where they had a fourth place in the Gold fleet racing and their places were in the 15th - 19th range in the top fleet.

Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders are expected to be named as the Mixed Multihull entry in the Nacra 17 catamaran. Their best placing in a World Championship was in the 2015 Worlds in Aarhus, Denmark where they finished in fourth place. They finished 14th in the 2016 event in Clearwater, Florida, last month and have been consistently close enough to the top five to justify selection. This will be Saunders second Olympics, having sailed in the 2012 Olympics in the 470 class. Gemma Jones is the daughter of Jan Shearer, Silver medalist in the Women's 470 at the Barcelona Olympics.

Although he was expected to medal in the 2016 Finn Europeans, Josh Junior is not a certainty for the 2016 Olympic nomination. His co-competitor in the Mens Heavyweight Singlehander, Andrew Murdoch tied for third overall in the Finn Gold Cup, the world championship for the class in November 2015 off Takapuna, while Josh Junior was in 14th place, missing the cut for the Medal race. The decision on the Finn nomination is expected to be deferred until May when the 2016 Gold Cup will be sailed in Italy.

The nomination in the Men's singlehanded Laser class is also expected to be deferred, until the conclusion of the 2016 Laser Worlds in Mexico in May 2016. The two candidates for selection, Andy Maloney and Sam Meech finished just a point apart in the 2015 Worlds in Kingston, Canada placing sixth and seventh overall respectively. .Maloney represented New Zealand in the Laser event in the 2015 Olympic Test event in Rio de Janeiro, finishing 11th and missing the cut for the Medal race. It seems likely that the selectors will want to keep their options open and make a decision in the third week of May 2016.

In the 2015 NZL Sailing Team, all ten classes on the Olympic program were represented, however on the 2016 slate three classes have been dropped – being the Laser Radial and Men's and Womens Windsurfer (RS:X).

The standard to reach the NZL Sailing Team is to achieve a top 12 in their most recent class World Championships or pinnacle event and to have shown consistency of performance over the past year.

Not making the cut for the NZL Sailing Team would have a significant impact on funding received by competitors.

It would appear that with limited funding available, Yachting New Zealand has diverted the funds to additional sailors in the Finn and Laser classes, who have met the Top 12 standard. There also seems to be a move by YNZ to expand and build depth into the Olympic classes, providing more than one selection option in classes. That is an expensive exercise and doesn't really add to the 2016 Olympic chances. However it is a fact of life when there is a criteria based system in place and more than one crew meets the criteria in a class. You have to fund both.

Although named in the 2015 NZL Sailing Team, 2012 Olympic representative and 7th place finisher in Weymouth JP Tobin did not compete in the 2015 Worlds , even though he finished in 16th spot in the 2014 Worlds in Santander – qualifying New Zealand for the event at the 2016 Olympics. He was dropped for the 2016 NZL Sailing Team and did not complete at the 2016 Worlds at Eilat, Israel, last month.

Polish-born Natalia Kosinska finished 16th and 12th nation at the 2016 RS: X World Championships held in Israel last month. She finished 18th overall in the 2015 Worlds in Oman.

Yachting sets itself a high standard for selection where to be selected a competitor has to be medal capable. Depending on which country you are from, that can mean being top ten or top five and capable of winning a Medal. Kosinska would appear to be just outside that cut, but there seems to be little point in not selecting her. She didn’t compete at the 2015 Test Event in Rio de Janeiro, last August – where tellingly New Zealand was only represented in seven of the ten events.

Sara Winther is really the only competitor in the selection viewfinder for the Women's Singlehanded Laser Radial event. She had time out with a wrist injury, but returned to competition in the 2015 Worlds, last November in Oman, placing 22nd overall. The only other New Zealander in contention is Susannah Pyatt, who finished in the 50’s in the same regatta. It would seem that the selectors will defer a final decision until after the 2016 Laser Radial Worlds in Mexico in April 2016.

After placing 16th overall in the 2014 RS:X Men's World Championships in Santander, Tobin has not competed in the 2015 or 2016 World Championships and would seem to be a long shot for selection unless some compromise is reached.

For the record New Zealand's placing at the 2014 ISAF World Sailing Championships, Santander were: 470Men - 12th; 470 Women - 2nd; 49er Men - 1st; 49erFX Women - 12th; Finn - 5th & 6th; Laser Men - 9th & 14th; Laser-Radial Women - 11th, Nacra 17 - 5th; RS:X Men - 16th; RS:X Women - 21st. When overlaid against the NZL Sailing Team selection criteria, it is more clear as to the funding choices made, and indeed a wider team was named for 2015 - but likely with variable funding depending on team rankings.

Entries have to be made by July 18, 2016.

While it seems that Yachting New Zealand may elect not to nominate in all classes in which it has qualified (as it has done in the past) this can have some serious consequences outside NZ.

In past Olympics when this has been done – New Zealand did not send crews in the Tornado catamaran and Sonar, the women's keelboat, in 2008 – the place has been allocated by ISAF, now World Sailing to so-called “wild card” entries, usually from developing countries which has the effect of increasing the number of countries competing at the Sailing Olympics.

However, this Olympic cycle a new qualification system has been used where as well as the first round of qualification at the 2014 World Championships, and then a second round at the 2015 or 2016 World Championships as decided by the class and World Sailing. A new third round has been the regional qualification at events like Sailing World Cup Melbourne for the Oceania region.

Given that there has been widespread qualification – how does World Sailing go for a wild card entry with just two or three months to go to the 2016 Olympics?

The other flaw with the handing back of qualified Olympic spots is that the effect is for a lowering of the standard of the competition. The then ISAF in its review of the Olympic and overall sailing competition post the 2008 Olympics recognised that allowing the entry of “Eddie the Eagle” competitors did not enhance the profile of the sport or the Olympics, and this did not go unnoticed by the IOC in its reviews and reporting sport by sport.

Whether there is any long-term effect from this short-term thinking, remains to be seen.

Certainly selection errors have been made in the past with refined New Zealand thinking. In 2008 because of a perception that Qingdao would be a light air Olympics, competitors in the Tornado catamaran and Women's Keelboat were not selected. Both were good moderate to heavy air crews.

Far from being a light air venue, Qingdao proved to the heaviest air Olympic Regatta since the 1988 Olympics in Busan, Korea.

On the domestic front, not sending competitors in classes which have qualified for Olympic places, particularly in the first round in 2014 sends a very mixed message to those young Kiwi sailors who follow in successive cycles in those same classes.

: