Anna Tunnicliffe - WSF, Elliott 6m's, Snipe Women's World Championship

by Anna Tunnicliffe on 26 Oct 2010 Anna Tunnicliffe of Team Tunnicliffe updates us on the team's latest:

Anna:

After leaving Bermuda, the team went to their respective homes for two weeks. And now we're back together for some training at the Chicago Match Race Center this week, in the Elliott 6m boats. It has been a while since all of us sailed together and sailed the Elliotts but we are looking forward to some great practices against Bill Hardesty and his team.

Immediately after I left Bermuda, I attended the Women's Sports Foundation Annual Salute, which is an annual awards dinner where amazing female athletes, from all number of sports, get together for a day and end it with a dinner. I was invited this year because, thanks to everyone's votes, I was a top finalist for the Sportswoman of the Year award. The original ten finalists were narrowed down to the final top five, based on the number of votes received, and then the winner was announced at the awards dinner. The recipeient of the award was Yuna Kim from Korea, the Gold Medalist figure skater who set new records in the scoring at the Olympics.

I arrived to New York on the Monday afternoon. Monday evening was a bowling event where the girls that were already in town went to have a fun evening hanging out and getting to know each other. Tuesday morning, the WSF was having a spin-a-thon to raise money for the foundation, so I attended one of the spinning classes to do my part. It was a great workout, and I got to meet even more athletes. Then the rest of the day was a bit busy as we were getting ready for the evening dinner. After getting back from the spinning class, we had a practice walk-through of the evening. Before the dinner, all of the athletes were introduced as they walked on stage, so to make sure we knew what we were doing and where we were going, we practiced. After that, I had a hair and makeup appointment. The tricky part here was that it was only 1:30 when I was getting my hair and makeup done and the evening events didn't start until 6pm. This made a challenging afternoon for me to keep everything looking nice; for the most part I succeeded I think. At 6pm, we walked along the red carpet. The celebrities make this look quite easy, but I have to tell you, it isn't. To strike a pose on cue that doesn't look ridiculous is very hard, and well, I'm not sure I did a great job, but luckily, Yuna was right in front of me on the red carpet. There were a lot of Korean press there so everyone wanted pictures.

Then it was off to the grand march where all the athletes walked on the stage. We then sat for dinner and the awards. They awarded five awards that evening; the recipients of which are truly amazing in their accomplishements...I was very inspired afterwards. On top of all of this great experience, I got to meet some amazing athletes. Some of the athletes to whom I was introduced were Billie Jean King, Laila Ali, Lyn-z Adams Hawkins, Michelle Kwan, Chanelle Sladics, Katie Spotz and Allison Felix. All very amazing athletes and I was very honored to meet them.

So now it's back to training. The forecast for today, in Chicago, looks perfect, but then it's supposed to start getting very windy, so it should make for an interesting next couple of days.

After this, I head to the Bitter End for the Pro-Am regatta, and then meet up with Molly in St. Petersburg, FL for the Snipe Women's World.

We would like to thank Carmeuse and Trinity Yachts for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG)
and its sponsors for their support.

Sail Hard,

Anna
Team Tunnicliffe

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