Nick Thompson hungry for gold after a great 2014

by Nick Thompson on 25 Oct 2014 Winning bronze at the Santander World Championships was a great end to a successful season for me, and I’m chuffed to have been on the podium at each of the three major events – the Worlds, the Europeans and the Rio Test Event – this year.

What’s especially pleasing is that those three events have seen a real mix of conditions, so to show the consistency that I have and the ability to perform across the wind range has been really important to me.

The best all-round sailors who can best adapt to what’s going around them are the ones who thrive at the Olympic Games, and that will certainly be important for a complicated venue like Rio. With what we’ve seen this year, I think I’m in a good place.

The Laser has always been one of the most, if not the most, closely-contested of the Olympic classes, and Santander showed that’s still very much the case with a number of people in the running for the podium spots, right up to and even during the medal race where place changes were happening throughout what was quite a lively finale. The Olympic silver medallist from Cyprus managed to capsize and break his mast so it was pretty full on!

To go into the Worlds medal race with a shout of winning as I did – and have at all the key events this year – is a great place to be and there’s no doubt that I am hungrier than ever for gold.

Santander was my fourth World Championship medal – with that record and with my form at the majors this season I’ve shown that I can be relied on to deliver at the pressure events, and I feel I raise my game for those events. In that sense, while it was great to see TV coverage of our sport from Santander, I was pretty disappointed by the BBC documentary that went out, in particular the comment made by Paul Goodison, which seemed to suggest otherwise. Given the number of supportive messages I’ve received I would say people seem to agree with me.

My form is testament to all the work that myself and my coach Chris Gowers have been putting in to change some of my technique and eradicate some of the bad habits that crept into my sailing last year. It’s great to see all that finally coming together and it paying dividends on the race course.

Chris is a really great guy and a great coach to work with. He’s brilliant at keeping me level and not letting emotions get into the picture, as they’re pretty useless when it comes to decision making!

The progress of the young British Laser guys this season has also been really pleasing, in particular Lorenzo Chiavarini who’s had an amazing 2014 with his under 21 World and Europeans titles, which he then followed up with 11th at the senior Worlds in Santander. Those guys are working hard, making big improvements and enjoying their sailing, which is great to see.

Autumn is now with us and although the main international racing season is over there’s still plenty going on. The domestic Laser events are in full swing, which are important in terms of qualifying places for the major regattas next year, and I’ll also be racing at the new ISAF Sailing World Cup Final in Abu Dhabi in November. While that’s not a focus event for me, I’ll certainly be hitting the startline doing all I can to win. It should be fun, and it will interesting to see how the event goes as ISAF looks to reshape the World Cup series from 2015.

I’ll also be heading back out to Rio for training in December, which I’m really looking forward to. Every time I go there, I enjoy it more. There was a great team energy and drive during our visit for the Test Event in August – due in no small part to our support staff.

They make our jobs so much easier and go way above and beyond their job descriptions to create the right atmosphere and make sure everything is covered, whether that’s our team physiologist doubling up as team chef in his makeshift kitchen, or our physio taking me to the best doctors she could find when I injured my arm – you could go through the list and say the same for them all. You can tell they live it and breathe as much as we do and want the gold medals for us as much as we sailors want them for ourselves.

Huge thanks to all those guys within the British Sailing Team, and also to UK Sport and Volvo for their support in making it all possible.

I’m in a good place with my sailing at the moment. Progress has been made for sure this year, but I know that I still have areas to improve on, and others are working hard to raise their games as well.

It’s that knowledge that excites me for the journey ahead!