Are Olympic sailors as fit as other athletes?
by Derby Anderson on 13 Aug 2008
Beijing Olympics - Qingdao Sailing Event Ingrid Abery
http://www.ingridabery.com
For the 2008 Qingdao Games, the US SAILING Team AlphaGraphics has delivered the fittest group of USA sailors to ever hit the Olympics. The overall level of athleticism in Olympic sailing has been raised in the past quad and our 'Performance Enhancement Team' (PET) has been extended to keep up with, and push, that change. Trainers have been working with USA windsurfers since 1992, and by now the team has developed into a full armada including a Doctor, Psychologist, Nutritionist, and four physical therapists.
Looking at the team now, it’s hard to ignore Laser Radial sailor Anna Tunnicliffe’s muscular prowess, but on the whole it used to be pretty unusual to see ripped sailors walking around the docks. Five-year team physio Scott Weiss explains, “Sailors are good at hiding their athleticism. It’s not cool to talk about how demanding it is.” Staff members who come from other sport backgrounds say it takes about five or six years to fully appreciate the many athletic dimensions of sailing.
For example, Weiss breaks down the athletic layers of Finn sailing. He says, “Imagine curling a 30-50 kilo weight in one hand and trying to do fine calligraphy with other hand. Then you stick your legs in the hiking straps and use as much force as downhill skier. Do that for five minutes, explode to other side, switch hands and do it again.” In addition to the physical demands, he says, “Nobody else has to compute the shortest and best route to their mark. It’s a brain sport. You could describe it as tactics but it’s really spatial mathematics.”
Now transfer that to Qingdao, where sailing athletes are tailoring their skills and bodies for light air such that they are the leanest USA sailors to ever attend an Olympics. Athletes like John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree modestly say they just cut out beer but, Weiss Says, “On this team body shapes are really changing. For the past six to nine months, team members regularly wake up at 2AM from hunger.” After just finishing a meal in the village cafeteria, USA Laser representative Andrew Campbell remarked he was hungry. He was asked when he was hungry and just said, “All the time.”
Weiss explains, “They’re walking a razor edge the whole time they’re here because they have to be strong but light.” USA Finn representative Zach Railey is down to 194lbs from 225 at the beginning of the quad. At the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Sailing he weighed 205. When he was in Qingdao for his June training camp, he was doing 2 sessions of gym work plus 3-5 hours of on-the-water training all day. Weiss says, “That’s the equivalent of an Olympic level swimmer who does three sessions a day, or an Olympic level triathlete. Sailors now are absolutely training at the same level as a world class athlete.”
The PET began with windsurfers and the needs of those sailors are intense. “With the board sailors the aerobic capacity is phenomenal. For a good proportion of the board event, a boardsailor is competing at a heart rate similar to that of an Olympic triathlete and competing for just as long.” He says triathletes are only asked to do that once, and sailors have to do it eight to ten times over the course of the Olympics. He says, “No one asks triathletes to do eleven races.”
For a trapeze boat like the 49ers and the 470s, balance is most emphasized, especially in the light air. Weiss and the PET refer to it as “dancing on eggshells.” In a 49er gybe hoist, the sailors briefly unhook from their wires, throw themselves across the boat and the crew makes the hoist, all while still doing this balancing dance. Weiss makes this analogy, “No one asks a rower to stand up in the boat and do a massively explosive pull, but that’s the type of athleticism brought to the fore here in Qingdao. You need balance and smoothness in the weight transfer, so it has to be subtle and gentle but at the same time powerful.”
After years of sailing, sailors hone certain senses more than others. PET members frequently mention the keen spatial awareness of sailors and the importance of sensory perception in the lighter breezes in Qingdao. “Sailors can feel a ten degree windshift by the hairs on their face. They feel a sensory awareness in ways other people can’t. They feel wind the way we feel water, it’s off the Richter.”
Scott Weiss first joined the US SAILING PET at the 2003 Pan Am Games. US sailors and in particular boardsailors had previously brought on their personal athletic trainers starting in 1992, but Weiss was the first to come to the team through the USOC. The USOC volunteer list is a long process: Weiss first stood on a seven year waitlist, and then as a staff applicant he was placed in succession from small training camps all the way up until he reached the Olympics. After one placement, staffers are never sure whether they will make it up to the next round, but can guarantee work if they are contracted by a team. Weiss was placed with the team in 2003 and has been contracted since. Dr. Amy Myers is also a USOC placement and works closely with Weiss and the rest of the physio team including Shawn Hunt, Mark Kenna, and Chris Herrera.
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