Glanfield reflects on his return to the 470 class

by Joe Glanfield on 4 Oct 2013 Double Olympic silver medallist Joe Glanfield made his return to the Olympic campaign trail this season after a four-year break, teaming up with 2012 silver medallist Luke Patience in a quest to win Britain’s first ever 470 Olympic gold at Rio 2016.

As their competition season comes to a close, Exmouth’s Glanfield reflects on his return to the class, their season’s progress and balancing a busy family life with his medal-winning ambitions...

For Luke and I the Santander City Trophy in September marked the last international competition of 2013. We won the regatta by 28 points and didn’t need to finish the medal race, which was a great way to end the season and gain confidence at the 2014 ISAF World Championship venue.

It has been a whirlwind six months for us, we have competed in seven regattas including our European and World Championships and we are now looking forward to some time to plan and prepare for next year.

This was our first season sailing together and my first year racing a 470 again since 2008. It’s with a lot of relief that I can say our performances have hugely exceeded our expectations. You can’t help having doubts, especially when you have been away from the class for so long, and I genuinely thought we might come in to the class well outside the top ten.

Our first regatta was in Palma, we did the Arenal training regatta in March before the World Cup event two weeks later. It was the perfect introduction back into Olympic sailing, a small, short event but with a good quality entry (both the 2013 European Champions and the 2012 Olympic bronze medallists were there). We literally had no idea how we would do, we had trained hard but still felt a bit ‘average’ at times. On the plus side our roles and communication all felt very natural and we were definitely pulling in the same direction when things were tight on the race course. We ended up winning that regatta and taking some valuable lessons on to the next two World Cup regattas we were about to compete in.

Palma and Hyeres World Cup regattas continued to be successful, we finished third in Palma then followed it up with a ninth in Hyeres – a regatta where we broke a boom in one race and the jib fell down in another race!

The encouraging thing was that we were consistent across the conditions. We were as likely to put in a good day in light winds as strong winds, and we had thought this would take much longer to come.

I also found out I was no way near fit enough yet! Each World Cup is six days long with the format meaning the regatta gets more important towards the end. In both Palma and Hyeres I could feel myself fading towards the end – in fact I was deliriously tired by medal race day and literally dragging myself out of bed!

I worked on my fitness and recovery during the spring through increased sailing and gym hours, and felt the improvement at the subsequent events. It’s still an area I need to improve through the autumn and winter and can give us a performance gain next year. Generally I can maintain my movement around the boat when I am tired but it comes at the cost of the decision-making and awareness of what is going on around us.

The Europeans and Kiel Regatta were a big success with a silver medal at the Europeans followed by a gold in Kiel. I have to say Kiel was a personal favourite for me, despite the ridiculous race format. I hadn’t competed in that event since 2000 and it is the only international regatta I have competed in without a medal so it was nice to tick the box with a gold.

Preparation for the World Championships was rather disjointed and compromised as I had baby number five due two weeks before the Worlds started. For this reason we trained in a small training group in Weymouth with me ready to dash home as soon as the phone rang!

Inevitably the baby was late, arriving just four days before I was meant to be travelling out to the Worlds (we delayed our departure). Most importantly she arrived safe and well and so I am now the proud parent to a lovely new baby girl to go with the three boys and girl I am already fortunate enough to have. Life is certainly busy and hard work but I couldn’t feel luckier!

We sailed well at the Worlds, La Rochelle was a tricky venue and one that neither of us had any prior experience of. We were right in the fight to win until the penultimate day when a couple of mistakes dropped us from the leaders before the medal race.

We have finished the season feeling delighted to have won medals for Great Britain and perhaps more importantly that we have made a very strong start to our journey towards the 2016 Olympics.

We will now set about on the challenge to make the improvements necessary to gain an advantage over our British Sailing Team
http://www.patienceglanfield.com/