Bundock and Forbes – looking to Athens

by Di Pearson on 25 Apr 2004 Darren Bundock and John Forbes returned to Australia this week to the cries of ‘what happened to you guys – you were out the back gate,’ referring to their sixth place at the Princess Sofia Trophy and their third overall at the Tornado World Championship, both sailed in Palma, Mallorca.

‘I was thrown that people kept saying that, I mean, what’s wrong with a third place?’ Forbes enquired.

Everyone is so used to seeing the pair take first place. They haven’t wavered from that podium position for nearly two years and everyone expected they would defend their World title successfully.

Had they done so, Forbes would have held a record seven World titles, and Bundock five.

It did not happen this time around, because, Forbes says, ‘we were there to have a serious look at the other competitors, we haven’t done that and we needed to, with the Athens Games on the horizon.’

Forbes went on to say that a number of sailors are getting better and better, like John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree from the USA, ‘they’ve really stepped up a notch, they are on fire and we thought they would win the Worlds, especially after their win at Princess Sofia.

'Having said that, the Argentine guys (Santiago Lange and Carlos Espinola), who won the Worlds, have always been a top ten and are a real threat,' Forbes stated.

Lange is a champion in a couple of classes and Espinola won two Silver medals in the Mistral class.

Whilst he was disappointed in one respect, to have missed his seventh World title, Forbes said he was grateful to have the six he holds. He also explained that their main mission was to check the opposition, while doing the best they could.

‘The others are getting better and better and are quietly catching us up. We had to know why. We expected it – you can’t expect to remain on top forever. So in that respect, we were smart.

A lot of the other guys at the Worlds didn’t know what had hit them; they were shocked at the top performance of a number of crews and the level of competition. The way Darren and I see it, there are seven or eight crews here that could end up with a medal.’

Bundy and Forbes had a frustrating time of things in Palma. They picked the wrong side of 95% of the shifts. Every time they went left, the breeze went right. Eventually, they went right, and the breeze went left.

‘We got great starts, but picked the shifts wrong. There were instances where we tracked past the layline and others went even further, but still came out in front of us – we couldn’t do much about it!

We had every condition you could imagine at those two regattas, very shifty, very hard to read, some courses were offshore, others in the bay.

Full credit to the Race Committee. They canned all the right races and kept us going on the other days,’ Forbes said.

He also pointed out that gone are the days where the top three finishers don’t have race places below tenth in their results.

When you look at the final results from both regattas, you can see what he is talking about.

As an example, their worst result was a 30th, and they but they still managed a third overall with 32 points on the low point system.

The top ten at each regatta had similar fates; such is the number of talented sailors in the class.

‘At least you won’t see us in a 30th come the Games – there are only seventeen competitors,’ Forbes quipped.

Bundock and Forbes plan now to finish tweaking their new Tornado which they did not have ready to use at the Worlds, then they will get some serious training in before making their assault on Athens.

While Bundy owns a Silver medal, Forbes currently holds Bronze and Silver.‘

'It would be nice to have that Gold, and that is what we are concentrating on,’ said Forbes, a phenomenal sailor who will retire from grand prix racing after the Games to concentrate on family and career.