Team Jolly report from the Womens 470 Circuit - 12 months from Rio

by Team Jolly on 29 Jul 2015 Team Jolly - Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie report one year out from the 2016 Sailing Olympics

Been a rather busy two months since our last little update!

We have been all over the world, competed in two events, and are now about to begin our preparations for the Pre Olympic Test event in Rio, at the Olympic venue, at the Olympic time of year, etc etc.. Basically the Olympics without so much hype and one year early!!

So.. to get you all back up to speed! We raced a World Cup regatta in Weymouth back in June, the first time we had sailed there since the Games in 2012.. It was a bit of a tough event for us, we were not really happy with the event as a whole.. Our result was ok I guess, we finished second on even points to our good old rivals the Brits, but we felt there were far too many missed opportunities, mixed with some sickness on Jo’s part, and some general grumpiness, it wasn’t the most fun regatta for us…

But as usual, when we hit a rough patch, we learn oh so much, and that we did! So we took some of those learnings into the European Champs a few weeks later in Aarhus, Denmark. Where we had a great time, really enjoyed the sailing, the racing, getting back into our groove… We won the Europeans by a nice 26 point margin, although we were missing a few of our main rivals, we were just happy we were just sailing well and having fun again!

So from there, Jolly has had a bit of a break, splitting all over the world, with Polly and Nathan heading back to NZ for a few weeks at home, Jo off to see family in Israel, a little break in Portugal to attend a wedding, and now early to Rio to await the rest of the team!

We are now all nice and refreshed, looking forward to getting back in the boat and getting out on the water again! Container unloading is tomorrow, so then we are straight into it, with a practice regatta from the third to the sixth of August, and then onto the Test Event where racing for us begins on the 16th of August.

We will also be updating our Facebook page when ever we get a chance throughout the regatta, so please have a look and see what we get up to! Hopefully there will be a little NZ media coverage as well, as we are just about at the one year to go mark!

See more at: http://www.teamjollyracing.com