Rio 2016- Annalise Murphy gets Irish eyes smiling again

by Sail-World.com NZL on 21 Aug 2016 What could have been one of the great performances of the 2012 Olympics in Weymouth came from Irish Laser Radial sailor Annalise Murphy, winning four straight races to open her regatta, before dropping back to fourth.

That slide turned into a prolonged form slump for the next three years. She qualified Ireland for Rio with a 20th placing in the 2014 World Championships. Even in April 2016, she failed to make the cut for the Gold fleet for the 2016 Worlds, and sailed out the regatta in the Silver fleet.

In Rio 2016, she was a different sailor. The old Annalise was back, but lighter and sharper than Weymouth 2012. Rounding the windward mark for the final time in the Medal race she had the Gold medal in her grasp, but came away absolutely delighted with the Silver.

The complete story of how this amazing turnaround was achieved, is probably yet to be told, but long-time Irish sailing correspondent, WM Nixon, writing in Afloat.ie fills in a lot of the background.

Some day we’ll get the full story of what happened during those next ten weeks to turn the Annalise Murphy story around, to change her from a loser in Mexico in May to a winner in Rio in August. Her support team never gave up on her, and her longtime coach Rory Fitzpatrick and ISA Performance Director James O’Callaghan added extra elements to the programme, including more intensive involvement with the legendary “coach of coaches”, Gary Keegan of the Institute of Sport.

It was a time of psychological and physical challenge, and while her psychologist Kate Kirby was a tower of strength, it was the challenge of “Re-shaping Annalise” for Rio which became central to the plan, for you’d guess that if she still felt she was too heavy for the average conditions in Rio, then she’d start most races with an inbuilt psychological disadvantage.

Rapid weight loss while maintaining peak fitness is not for the faint-hearted, but the Murphy household gave full support by taking all carbs out of the kitchen. Out in Rio meanwhile, it was decided that staying in the Olympic village itself was a calorie hazard, so an AirBnB setup was secured near the sailing base, an arrangement which scored highly on so many points, including maximising diet and nutrition, that you wonder more teams didn’t take this approach.

All this was taking place with the new addition of a key member to the Murphy team. When Annalise missed out so publicly on a medal back in 2012, one of those who shared her disappointment was the New Zealand Women’s Laser sailor Sarah Winther. Despite having placed 20th overall in 2012, she was completely taken up by the Olympic thing, and devoted her life for the next four years to securing the place in Rio 2016, in which she duly succeeded.

But by this time the New Zealand sailing authorities were applying the same ruthless approach as the British, and they ruled that anyone who failed to get into the top ten in their class’s last world championship before Rio 2016 would not be entitled to take up his or her place.

Sarah Winther placed 11th in the Laser Worlds in Mexico in May 2016. It was so close that many in the New Zealand sailing community assumed the rules would be stretched. But on the contrary, even an appeal by Winther to New Zealand’s Sports Tribunal was rejected. New Zealand was not to be represented at all in the 37-strong Women’s Laser Radial fleet in Rio. If some Kiwi tabloids had themselves a bit of righteous indignation about Winthers being left out in the cold, it meant that one hyper-keen sailor found herself lacking a purpose in life when she’d hoped to be preparing for the series she’d dreamt of, for she’s of compact build and Rio’s average sailing conditions might have been devised with Sarah Winther in mind.

But in fact, it may well be that Sarah Winters true vocation is as a coach. For in a very short space of time after rejection by the New Zealand authorities on May 31st, she’d somehow or other become part of the Annalise Murphy team as training sailor and support coach at a time when she could bring something absolutely game-changing to the campaign.

The Murphy camp in its broadest sense was a very happening place in June and July. The weight loss went so well that while conservative reports put it at 7.5 kilos, the word on some grapevines was it might have been as high as 10 kilos in six weeks. Yet thanks to the shared focus and the new intensive sailing programme pacing with Sarah Winther, Annalise somehow managed to transform herself into a new ultra-slimline version while becoming if anything fitter than ever, and she was very fit to begin with.

Yet it was all kept under wraps. Even public participation in a pre-Olympic series in Rio in July was quietly dismissed as irrelevant, although Annalise was the winner. But it was her final appearance back in Dublin, at the end of July before she returned to Rio for the main event, which made it clear that something significant had happened.

She was in very good form, comfortable with herself and her mind in a good place, and she committed to expectations of being at least in the top eight with a serene confidence which quietened the press gathering, and left everyone with an unmistakable feeling of hope.

For the full story click here

For other stories on Annalise Murphy and the Olympics by David Branigan of the Irish Times click here and