The Kiwis scratch their heads, Victor's coach and Moor
by Rob Kothe and the Sail-World team on 8 Jan 2014
2014 Cape Town to Rio yacht race Trevor Wilkins
Sail-World.com, the little Aussie battler has been the largest sailing news group in world since March 2013.
It is 2014 and we've hit the ground running. Tomorrow we will launch six new sailing sites, there will be another 12 in the next week. You will be the first to know the details.
The Sail-World technical sailing translation glossary runs to 30 pages. It’s currently being translated into Arabic, Hungarian, Thai, Swedish, Finnish, Malay, and Filipino. We just received the latest 20 pages of English-Russian corrections from Oleg Illyn, the Russian Sailing Federation Secretary General.
Who cares you might ask?
Well Victor Kovalenko does, Oleg was Victor's 470 coach for 10 years... but that is another story and we will tell it soon.
Every summer we rail against the use of the word ‘heats’ in non-elimination sailing series, when ‘races’ is the correct term, gradually we seem to making progress, says Peter Moor, the President of SHAHT's, but now the world moves on and now the concerns move to the possible extinction. Read Moor today.
Tragedy struck the Cape Town to Rio Race when the 35 boat fleet was hit by 40-60 knot wind on their first night at sea. One sailor has died, several more crewmembers have been injured and plenty of equipment destroyed, two boats have turn backed. Get the full story, inside this issue, and stay tuned to the website for more information from this tragedy, as it becomes known.
Meanwhile, in America’s Cup news, former Olympic medal winner and long-time Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) coach Rod Davis is still searching hard for the reasons that ETNZ ended up losing the 34th America’s Cup, despite the fact that they at one point held what many Cup journalists (myself included) considered to be an insurmountable lead.
'It’s still hard to believe that we out-prepared Oracle by that much, ahead of this regatta, and lost the regatta,' said Davis. 'Normally when you out-prepare a team by that much in any sport, you come away with a victory. And it didn’t happen that way.'
While Davis has undoubtedly amassed a fine collection of contributing factors for ETNZ’s unbelievable defeat, one reason stands considerably prouder than its cohorts. 'The major mistake that I see in the campaign was letting the world know we were foiling way too early,' said Davis. 'From a Sponsor, Press and Public point of view it was a coup, but for the big picture and winning the Cup, it was a liability'
While it’s no secret that Oracle Team USA was playing catch-up in the foiling department, literally deep into the finals, there’s also no question that the Americans learned a lot about making an AC72 fly by watching their antipodean rivals. Had ETNZ been able to keep this particular cat in its particular bag for even a month or two longer (back in 2012), there’s a reasonable chance that ETNZ’s level of preparation would have exceeded even Jimmy Spithill’s confidence in his Oracle Team USA crew.
While hindsight is always 20-20, there’s no question that the sailors and staff involved with ETNZ for AC34 will likely spend the rest of their lives pondering what they maybe could have done a bit differently during the final weeks of Cup racing. Inside this issue, don’t miss the great interview that Sail-World’s New Zealand editor, Richard Gladwell, put together with Davis, and stay tuned for the latest news from ETNZ.
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