Q&A Olympic Coach Paul Brotherton Live Call: How new technology can turn you into a better sailor

Brotherton with Sime and Mihovil Fantela © Road to Gold

Paul Brotherton © Road to Gold

New technology is transforming the way that sailors and coaches are able to analyse and improve boat speed and technique, but how do you make sense of it all?

Paul Brotherton used to be a 'seat of the pants' sailor who got a long way on natural talent, grit and determination. After representing Great Britain at the Olympics in the 470, winning the 49er European Championships among many other accolades, he moved into top-flight coaching. Among his coaching successes was helping the '3 Blondes in a Boat' win Olympic gold in the Yngling keelboat at the 2008 Games in China.

Paul continues to work with the best, although these days uses a range of telemetry and gauges to analyse a crew's performance in micro-detail. This can speed up the learning curve very quickly and has proven more useful than ever with the lack of regattas during Covid times.

Join Paul for this week's Road To Gold live Q&A session on Zoom.

When?

The Q&A kicks off at 8pm UK time / 9pm Central European Time on Wednesday evening 26 May. That's 7am Thursday morning 27 May in Auckland.

Hosting the call and fielding the questions will be founders of the Road To Gold online course, sailing journalist Andy Rice and Olympic coach Hamish Willcox, who is going through compulsory two-week quarantine in an Auckland hotel after a successful trip to Spain working with Pete Burling & Blair Tuke on their 49er campaign for Tokyo 2021.

We'll be asking Paul about his own brand of sailing telemetry called Trusail, along with other options in the market. And we'll be asking what is the best choice not just for full-time sailing professionals but for the keen weekend warrior looking to make gains on limited amounts of time and money.

Whatever level you're currently at with your sailing, join Hamish and Andy for this 60-minute Q&A session to ask Paul your specific questions. Here's how you get on the call:

1. Make sure you're signed up to the Road To Gold Facebook Group to get the Zoom link to the call.

2. Click on the Zoom link and register to join the call this Wednesday/Thursday (depending on where you are in the world!)

Here's what some top sailors have to say about working with Paul Brotherton's TruSail technology:

"When I have worked with Artemis Racing it has been amazing to see the power of good data and data analysis, but this power has previously been out of reach for an Olympic campaign. For the first time TruSail gives us America's Cup answers on an Olympic campaign budget. The software is so simple to use we can analyse the data ourselves immediately without the need for a team of people to sift through the data."
John Gimson (Nacra 17 World Champion 2020 with Anna Burnet, GBR representatives for Tokyo 2021)

"Gear selection is a massive part of any Olympic campaign and working with Paul and TruSail has made that process significantly more objective. When we change mast or sail we have immediate data from the second we sheet on compare and contrast."
Sime Fantela, (470 Olympic Champion 2016 & 49er World Champion 2018)

Here's the Facebook Group link again - www.facebook.com/groups/roadtogoldsquad