Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie return to Weymouth for World Cup

by Team Jolly on 7 Jun 2015 Olympic Gold medalists and former world champions in the Womens 470 are back in Weymouth, England, for the next event in the ISAF World Sailing Cup. They update on their arrival in Weymouth and recent training session in Brazil.

It’s been nearly three years since we won our Olympic Gold medal here in Weymouth, although we both feel like it was at least ten years ago! Very strange to be back here, walking around the town, riding to the sailing academy, walking around the boat park.. Lots of memories… Its like I find myself just walking to get somewhere not quite knowing where I am going, but actually getting the route perfect anyway!

So, this time we are just here for a little World Cup action, the regatta starts Wednesday and goes for five days, with forty of the top 470 women’s teams competing, it will be a good tough event, with hopefully a little of that traditional Weymouth wind!

It’s been a rather busy month and a bit since our last World Cup regatta in France in late April, we went home for a few days, then straight up to Rio to do some more training at the new Olympic venue! We had an awesome fleet of boats to train with, lots of the top men’s boats, so we got a lot out of it, very worthwhile, even for all the travel!

From there we have had a week and a half off, well, not really ‘off’ but not sailing the 470 anyway! With Polly heading home to NZ to get back in the gym, and Jo off to Holland to do some coaching at the Delta Lloyd regatta and fit in a paddle board race while she was at it.

And now after arriving in Weymouth yesterday, we are all rigged up and ready to get on the water tomorrow for a few days practice before we start racing! Looking forward to sailing out there again, we did rather a few hours on this patch of water in the build-up to London, so hopefully we can remember some of it!!

- See more by clicking here