NZL Sailing Team: Focus on Olympics to ramp up after six classes qualified

by Yachting New Zealand & Richard Gladwell/Sail-World 13 Aug 2018 09:31 AEST 11 August 2018

New Zealand might not have won a medal at the sailing world championships in Aarhus but the bigger picture is at play and, importantly, six classes were qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Qualifying six out of the 10 Olympic classes had been the target beforehand and it was never assumed this would be achieved in Aarhus, particularly at a venue that threw up everything from light winds through to powerful squalls.

A number of countries have fallen short of their own targets and will need to qualify boats at subsequent regattas, and it is at these events New Zealand sailors will have opportunities to qualify in the remaining four classes – men’s and women’s RS:X, women’s 470 and Laser Radial.

“It was disappointing not to get any medals but our main objective this week was to qualify the classes for the Olympics and we have done that in all six classes, which is a success,” Yachting New Zealand high performance director Ian Stewart said.

“It has been very tricky [sailing in Aarhus], tricky for forecasters and tricky for competitors. In saying that, the good guys still floated to the top. Our guys sailed really well but it has been tough.”

Sam Meech (Laser) and Josh Junior (Finn) both flirted with the gold medal in their classes before finishing fourth overall and Logan Dunning Beck and Oscar Gunn (seventh 49er), Alex Maloney and Molly Meech (eighth 49erFX) and Andy Maloney (10th Finn) also achieved top-10 results.

Liv Mackay and Micah Wilkinson (11th Nacra 17) and Paul Snow-Hansen and Dan Willcox (12th men’s 470) both narrowly missed out on their top 10 medal races but qualified the boat for Tokyo.

The Olympic venue will now come into sharp focus with the majority of New Zealand sailors who competed in Aarhus heading to Enoshima next month for a World Cup regatta.

“It’s less than 24 months to the Olympics and all the attention goes to Enoshima now for us,” Stewart said. “We have a World Cup there in September and we really focus on our venue development and becoming familiar with Enoshima from a shore operations and weather point of view. It’s the start of our intense focus on the Olympic venue.”

The selection of New Zealand’s team for the Olympics is still some way off, and there will be some intense competition in some classes like the Nacra 17, 49er and Laser, but there will be some additions to the 2019 NZL Sailing Team, this country’s top tier sailing squad, following these world championships.

“Although we didn’t get any medals, there were some real positives to come out of the week,” Stewart said. “We have some new members of to the NZL Sailing Team.

“In the 49er, Logan Dunning Beck and Oscar Gunn were in the top 10 and leading during the regatta. Outstanding result. And we welcome Andy Maloney back into the NZL Sailing Team and what he and Josh Junior are doing together in the Finn, they are right on track and going well.

“Our usual top performers were there or thereabouts. Although it was a brutal week, the big picture is not grim. It’s actually looking quite solid.”

Sail-World NZ:

Missing from the YNZ commentary is the fact that New Zealand Qualified in all ten events at this regatta in 2014 at Santander, Spain. New Zealand only nominated in seven events for the 2016 Olympics and was the country who turned down the most places. That was a set back for the three classes - RS:X Men, RS:X Women's and Laser Radial.

The expectation was that the Mens and Womens RS:X would be dropped from the 2020 Olympic slate at the November 2016 Annual Conference of World Sailing which usually confirms the classes for the next Olympics. Instead, the Council of the world body changed its mind, rejecting Kiteboarding, which had been endorsed by the same body in the Mid-Year meeting. The November 2016 meeting opted to retain the 2016 Olympic classes for 2020 and instead has set in place a major review process which could see seven of the ten classes replaced in 2024.

Also missing from the YNZ commentary is the fact that overall Olympic entry numbers have dropped from 380 in 2016 to 350 for 2020 in Tokyo. Coupled with that reduction the numbers of qualifying places have fallen from being 50% of the places in 2014 for the 2016 Olympics to 40% in 2018 for the 2020 Olympics. In numbers that adjustment means that the available places have dropped from 190 in 2014 at Santander to 140 in 2018 in Aarhus.

The saviour for New Zealand (and a few others) was that Japan, as host country for the 2020 Olympic regatta have lifted their performance, and given that the Host country automatically gets one place in each class in which they compete in the Qualifier, places often went outside the top ten.

It must also be remembered that while NZ qualified in all ten classes in Santander, helped by the bigger numbers, New Zealand just slid inside the cut-off on several. One of those was Alex Maloney and Molly Meech who just squeaked in on the Olympic Qualification, but went onto win the Silver Medal in Rio and came with an ace of winning the Gold in what was the cliff-hanger race of the Rio Olympics.

The positives from Aarhus is that there are now several classes in which New Zealand has a genuine depth of internationally ranked talent. In most cases, those sailors are young and have good Olympic and other prospects ahead of them. Most competitors had a serious achievement such as a race win in Aarhus and for those at their first regatta at this level is an excellent achievement and is a solid base for future success rather than a flash in the pan.

Also in terms of the medal count, it should not be forgotten that Peter Burling and Blair Tuke were not competing, and few would have bet against these two for a medal, if not a Gold in the 49er. That is not to detract from the excellent results from the other New Zealanders in the 49er class, but Burling and Tuke are definitely the Gold standard of Olympic sailing.

Underlining the point that class is permanent, former 49er Gold and Silver medalist, Nathan Outteridge, sailing with his sister Hayley in the Nacra 17 class, came within a point of winning the Gold medal in what was their third major international regatta in the Mixed crew multihull.

The Aarhus regatta was much larger than the Olympics - roughly four times the size. That can be very daunting as the infrastructure required to run such an event has all the grace of a lumbering tank. The Olympics have smaller fleets, less depth (in that multiple top competitors from one country are not permitted) and generally suits the "small is beautiful" New Zealand style.

Further Aarhus is quite different water from Sagami Bay, Japan. Aarhus is semi-landlocked with a climate driven by the Scandinavian and European land mass. Sagami Bay is open ocean, bordered by land on one side only.

Kiwi sailors should take great comfort from the fact that Sagami Bay and the island of Enoshima was the venue of Helmer Pedersen's and Earle Wells' Gold medal win in the Flying Dutchman class in 1964.

After training solidly since the end of the Olympic Trials off Murrays Bay, they went to Japan with good speed, thanks to the international quality fleet that was present in the Flying Dutchman class in New Zealand at that time.

There are a lot of parallels from 1964 to what we see in New Zealand's Olympic effort in the run-up to 2020 Olympics at the same venue.

Being sat on your backside at this stage of an Olympic campaign, as has happened to the NZL Sailing Team, does no harm either. Expect the NZL Sailing Team to get back up quickly after this minor fall.

Hopefully, the painful memories of Aarhus will remain fresh, and the determination strengthened for the fightback on Sagami Bay in 2020.

Classes qualified by New Zealand for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics:

49er
49erFX
Nacra 17
Laser
Finn
Men’s 470