Burling unfazed by recent results in 49ers and America's Cup

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 1 Aug 2016 Four times World 49er Champion, Peter Burling was sanguine over breaking their four-year unbroken winning streak in the Olympic skiff, in the final regatta before the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“For us, it is all about going to Rio and trying to win a Gold medal. The winning streak has been nice to have, but it has all been about learning and improving and getting better.”

“We are very happy about where we are at going into the Games.”

Racing was held on all the Rio Olympic courses in the event which was a final warm-up regatta for the Olympic regatta itself.

He was a little dismissive of the significance of the loss, in the 2016 South American Championship which earned Burling and crew, Blair Tuke a highlight mention at the top of the prime-time television news

“It was just a short regatta,” he said. “The 49er fleet is really tight, and you have to execute on the day – we didn’t quite manage to do it that time. But we are really happy with we were able to achieve over that block.”

Burling is reasonably accepting of the pollution in Rio de Janeiro and the fact that it could trip up and otherwise well-prepared crew.

“The pollution situation hasn’t really changed. It’s been like that for a long time, and we are ready to deal with it,” is his short response.

Turning to the America’s Cup World Series, the previous weekend, in which a new crew from Emirates Team NZ dropped from being 10 points in front on the ACWS leaderboard to being 10 points behind the second placed team overall, Oracle Team USA. Burling said he wasn’t too surprised by the crew’s performance.

“I think the boys did very well – they haven’t had much training. The likes of BAR do a lot of training in a very similar boat that they have in the shed. Oracle had a pretty good week as well. It was a pretty tough ask to expect our guys to jump in and get the boat around the track. They did a very good job but were unfortunate to lose points to Oracle and BAR. But we are still in good shape going into the next couple of events. We’ll get it back.”

Having launched their AC45S development boat only a few days before the ACWS Portsmouth, Team NZ don’t have too many options for training crew ahead of the AC World Series regattas, and pre-regatta training time in the AC45OD is limited to the two Practice Days before the ACWS starts.

“We have only done a little bit of training in the Luna Rossa foiler – but that was over the summer and six or seven months back,” Burling explains. “We haven’t done much at all recently, which makes it tough when you go to those events.

“But we make up for it in other areas…”

“The AC45OD is a very different boat to what we will be sailing in the Cup. The AC50 is about double the speed in all directions. We are very fortunate that Glenn Ashby has been able to spend so much time in the GC32 recently. He is probably getting more time in on foiling catamarans than the rest of us, and he is doing a good job.”

As with the 49er, Burling says consistency is the key to winning.

“With all those ACWS events you have to be consistent, and if you make a little mistake here and there, you won’t win.

“For us, we just have to sail well over the next couple (France and Japan), before the Cup itself.”

Despite the pressure to get back to the top of the leaderboard in the America’s Cup World Series, Burling and Tuke are going to take some time out after Rio de Janeiro, so they don’t get stale in the tail-end of the America’s Cup campaign. They are also looking forward to being able to focus on the one class, rather than having a split focus across the America’s Cup and Olympics.

“We have the French event coming up after Rio. Our plan after Rio is to come back to NZ, have a bit of time off, and then get back into it. But it will be a lot more relaxing just to have the one boat to focus on, and we are definitely looking forward to having more time at home this summer.”

“There is always training and racing going on, but after Rio, it will be nice just to have a single focus, rather than be spread across the two events, including a lot less travel. We will be more in the public eye because we will be on the water in the AC45S and then the 50. But it has been fairly busy on that side for a long time.

Turning back to the immediate task, Burling doesn’t think the target has been taken off their back after their not winning what would have bene their 29th consecutive regatta in the 49er class.

“I don’t see that a lot has changed,” he said. “We are really happy with how we are going and just concentrate on ourselves. That is all we can worry about because that is all we can control.”

Neither does he think the result took any pressure off the 49er duo.

“I don’t think it changed things either way. It was just a two-day regatta. It was just more training for us.

“We are always training, and trying things and learning. We got a lot out of that last block. Now we have just got to go and sail well like we did a year ago.

“You have to sail well at an Olympics to win a Gold medal. They don’t just get handed out. We are really looking forward to that challenge of doing it.”

The rest of the Olympic 49er fleet have been scratching their heads for the past three years or so to work out the secrets of NZ 49er crew’s success. Burling isn’t about to spill the beans.

“I couldn’t tell you, mate. We are just enjoying our yachting at the moment,” is his response.

Burling won’t comment on whether he feels they have a speed edge, which in any class makes you look tactically brilliant to boot.

“You need to be strong in a lot of different areas to win consistently in an Olympic class,” he explains. “There are a lot of guys spending a lot of time and effort to win these events, and you can’t just be strong in one area. You have to be strong across the board.

“If you are fast, but down on tactics you won’t be any good. If you are slow, you will struggle as well.”