Reading Australia’s Rio 2016 Sailing Report Card

by John Curnow on 21 Aug 2016 Pre-event, Australian Sailing officials predicted there would be between three and five medals at Rio 2016. So Tom Burton's Gold in the Laser, and then Silver for the 470 Men’s sailors, Matt Belcher and Will Ryan, London 49er Gold Medallists Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen, and then lastly Nacra 17 first time campaigners, Jason Waterhouse and Lisa Darmanin, was a good result.

It is possible that some of those athletes will all be disappointed with what could have been, however, yet as we’ll see in a minute, there is some science in it all too. Realistically, our 49er Silver Medallists were not expecting their Kiwi rivals to roll over. In Weymouth 2012 we took three Gold and a Silver to take the overall sailing event crown, and most notably, three of the Australia’s seven Gold Medals, overall.

Not so this time. Team GBR claimed two Golds and a Bronze to take the 'winning nation’ tag, ahead of the Netherlands with two Gold. Next was Australia with a Gold and three Silver, to claim the best mix of the most medals, ahead of NZL with a Gold, two Silver and a Bronze.

Mind you, as the ‘winningest’ Olympic Sailing Coach, Victor Kovalenko, always reminds us, a Gold medal at the Olympics is only guaranteed when athletes achieve world domination in the year before an Olympic Games! As the Australian Sailing Team went into Rio without a current world champion, the fact that Australia topped the overall sailing medal count is a good result.

The venue’s report card? Overall a tick! Weather good, on water organisation good, medals spread, pollution not super noticeable and just the once serious illness, security good, and Zika non-issue. Tick. Tick. Tick. Could have been a lot worse and it gets past it all without any comparisons with Munich, which at one point with social/financial/violence issues looked somewhat ominous. After hundreds of thousands of words of doom and gloom, the 2016 Rio de Janerio Olympic sailing regatta went off much better than the media expected.

The one thing sailors want is a good mix of weather, that after all is why you have a multiday race program, not a single race in each class. Pollution was less than expected, while there were some pungent whiffs, the sickness widely reported was from previous visits to Rio. There was not the anticipated sofas in the water, nor rafts of plastic bags, and there was only one body part in the water, a severed leg and its was at least three thousand metres from the Guanabara race track. Thankfully!!!

The offshore course delivered some rollicking seas, the extra days in the program allowed the inshore medal races to be sailed without compromise. So as the Games draw to a close, (at the time of writing) we can only hope that Australia edge out Spain to take Bronze in the Basketball, and we look forward to seeing the Australian Olympic Sailing Team at Hamilton Island next week.

Looking four years ahead then, and Australian Sailing should be able to make a similar medal prediction, with a mix of some current and new players. While AS would no doubt have liked more Gold, on the overall Government funding scale, Sailing has once again outperformed most of the other Olympic sports. Mainstream media has been baying for blood with other much higher profile sports.

In another four years, with Tokyo 2020 being logistically easier for Australia, the Australian Sailing Team should be very strong once more. How so? Well Tom Burton and the talented Matt Wearn should be pushing for Laser Gold again, perhaps a new combination in the 470 Men’s, with Ryan maybe looking for a new helm, post Rio.

Jake Lilley will be knocking on the Finn medal door, that is if Tom Slingsby has not spoiled the young Queenslanders party. The Sydney cousins, Waterhouse and Darmanin, should be strong Gold Medal contenders, and the 49er program would be likely to include a Gilmour or a Phillips even.

Now is the time for Ashley Stoddart to cement her place in the top half of the Laser Radial Top 10, and the search for talent in the RS:X ranks must continue. The 49er FX talent must be allowed to shine through on an even and equal racetrack, and if determination has anything to do with, we’ll see just that. No added pressure, but please also do it for the ones behind you, like Annabelle Davies and Hayley Clark, who won the 29er World Championships not that long ago!

Right now, we wish the Australian Paralympic Sailing Team a great Rio 2016 regatta!!

	Country
	1 Great Britain		2		1		0		3
	2 Netherlands		2		0		0		2
	3 Australia		1		3		0		4
	4 New Zealand		1		2		1		4
	5 Croatia		1		1		0		2
	6 France		1		0		2		3
	7 Argentina		1		0		0		1
	7 Brazil		1		0		0		1
	8 China		0		1		0		1
	8 Ireland		0		1		0		1
	8 Slovenia		0		1		0		1
	9 Denmark		0		0		2		2
	10 Austria		0		0		1		1
	10 Germany		0		0		1		1
	10 Greece		0		0		1		1
	10 Russia		0		0		1		1
	10 United States		0		0		1		1