Sail-World.com : What Katie did next…
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'Team Acuity: (l to r) Nina Curtis, Kristen Short, Jessica Eastwell, and Lewmar’s Katie Spithill. Photo: Team Acuity Media'
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If you speak to any elite athlete they will usually tell you the same thing: natural talent is essential but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. Success usually follows years of dedicated training and perseverance when things don’t go according to plan. And even if the athlete has the guts to keep on going sometimes time, money and family commitments will prevent them reaching their goals. Australian Katie Spithill’s Team Acuity this year rose to 3rd place in the International Sailing Federation’s Women’s Match Racing World Rankings list and is now aiming for the top spot. We spoke to her about the difficult road to achieving a dream.
Spithill grew up in a sailing family on Pittwater’s Scotland Island where the only access to her home was via boat. She and her siblings started sailing early and both Katie and her brother James quickly discovered an affinity for match racing. At the same time James was helming Luna Rossa in this year’s America’s Cup, Katie and her team were fighting to achieve their goal of a top three world ranking.
 | Team Acuity Aust Womens Match Racing Women’s Champions - |
When we asked her why she had chosen to specialise in match racing the answer she gave was a surprisingly pragmatic: it came down to what was financially feasible and which class would provide a level playing field.
‘With match racing the boats are provided and they’re all identical so it’s not about who has the most money or whose parents have the most money or the best equipment; because the equipment is identical it’s only how you sail them and often it’s about how quickly you can grasp the concept of sailing a different boat.’
‘It also makes it a lot more feasible to be able to travel to all the events because we’ve only got to budget airfares not shipping boats and repairs and what have you.’
She acknowledged that there are other one design classes that she could have chosen to compete in but said that match racing was something special: it’s fast, exciting, provides immediate feedback and demands intense concentration and excellent tactical skills. If ocean racers are the poker players of the sea then match racers are the mental equivalent of its chess players.
 | Team acuity - 2006 Australian Womens Match Racing Championship - Aline Van Haren © |
‘It involves a lot of thinking and a lot of mind set. They’re over in an average of 30-40 minutes; apart from the America’s Cup racing they’re all very short races and if you miss a second the race is over. It’s full on but its good fun and it’s rewarding too: it’s pretty clear to see what happens. In a fleet race during a regatta you could finish mid fleet and never know where you are. But in match racing it’s pretty simple.’
2007 proved to be an unusually good year for the eight member Team Acuity and their target of reaching the number one position in either the 2008 or 2009 season does not look unrealistic. In October they won in the first grade of the USA Women’s Rolex Osprey Cup. The preceding month saw strong performances in the Australian Women’s Match Racing Nationals and the Trentino Women’s Match Race in Italy.
But the crowning achievement for the team was 2nd place in the ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Championships held in France in August of this year. Press photographs taken at the time show a group of young women proudly displaying their silver medals and clearly ecstatically happy. If Spithill was disappointed by the second placing she wasn’t showing it: the final five race series was shortened to just three races due to adverse weather and Spithill went down in a tightly fought duel 2-1 to France’s Clare Leroy.
.JPG) | Team Acuity 2nd in Grade 1 Trentino Women’s Match Race, Italy - Team Acuity |
The preceding couple of paragraphs describe Team Acuity’s success but also highlight one of the team’s major barriers to success. In the southern hemisphere women’s match racing is still in its infancy with all the major regattas held in Europe or the States. Obviously Team Acuity needs to compete internationally to improve their world ranking and this means regular long distance flights for up to eight people.
‘Airfares are our biggest expense, everything else we can deal with. If accommodation isn’t provided we can always find something or stay with a family. The cost of airfares from here to Europe for each trip isn’t cheap and a lot of the time we do need to come back. With the girls needing to get back for work or school, you can’t stay over there for too long.’
A number of Team Acuity members, including Spithill, are balancing full time jobs with their sailing and training commitments. Some are also studying full time and supporting themselves via part time employment. Spithill commented that they all found time management one of the hardest aspects of their world championship campaign.
‘Our schedule involves 2-3 sessions in the gym and 2-3 sessions on the water a week. We’re doing a bit of cross training in the next couple of months because we don’t have any match racing events; we actually want to get out and do some cross training with different boats’.
‘You’ve got to have a lot of discipline to just keep pushing through with it, the training and everything, and I suppose that’s something that we grew into as a team’.
Spithill works for Lewmar and currently manages their online marketing department. She said that Lewmar has pretty much been the perfect employer when it comes to balancing her sailing career with a full time job. Earlier this year when Spithill’s fiancé was competing in the America’s Cup (Grant Pellew of United Internet Team Germany) Lewmar supported her move to Valencia by arranging for her to continue working for them online.
She said that the company encourages a strong sailing culture amongst its employees and that her passion for sailing directly benefits her working life. ‘It’s good to go to work and then leave work and go sailing and it all links together which makes it a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable.’
Spithill comes across as a ‘people person’: she clearly enjoys working with teams of people and says that one of the things she enjoys about working for Lewmar is that she has been part of the same group of employees for over four years. When asked about her sailing achievements she speaks about them as being something that the eight member team has achieved as a single unit; it’s almost as if the team has developed an individual identity and become a person in its own right.
Team Acuity will next compete in the ISAF Women’s Match Racing Worlds in April 2008 in Auckland, New Zealand. They are currently seeking additional sponsorship to support their 2008/2009 campaign to be the top ranked women’s match racing team in the world.
http://www.katiespithill.com
Contact details:
Lewmar Navtec Australasia Pty Ltd.
Address : Unit 4, 224 Headland Rd
City : Dee Why
State : NSW
Postcode : 2099
Country : Australia
Phone : +61 02 9936 7111
Fax : +61 02 9936 7112
http://www.lewmar.com
by Helen Hopcroft
11:10 PM Tue 6 Nov 2007 GMT
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