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September 2007

Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield Olympic Diary

Having just completed the Skandia Sail For Gold Regatta we have finally come to the end of a very long, and important summer. This year was all about qualifying for the single British entry to compete at the 2008 Olympic games, as with most classes in Britain we had stiff competition for the position. Our strongest rivals were Nic Asher and Elliot Willis, we have always trained together as we believed learning from each other and keeping what we do confidential from other nations will help us become the best in the world, unfortunately only one of us would get to compete at the Olympics. Last year we won the Pre Olympic regatta in China whilst Asher and Willis won the world championships setting the scene for a big fight off to gain Olympic selection. In many ways them winning the World Championships played into our hands, until then we had always had the pressure of being favourites, once they became world champions the media viewed us equally, giving them some of the pressure we had. The reality is the world championships is the only regatta they have ever beaten us in so we were confident if we peaked for the trials we would be able to beat them.

The first big hurdle was the Cascais World Championships during July, we needed to be first British boat and ideally in the top 3 to get the opportunity to compete at the Pre Olympic regatta the following month, a top 3 at this regatta would almost definitely hand us selection. Cascais is a notoriously windy venue so we made sure we put on a bit of weight and were fit and strong, we also worked hard on our boat handling and speed in strong winds. I had another complication thrown in there as my wife was expecting a baby, due the last day of Cascais. I desperately didn’t want to be away whilst the baby was born but also had to stay focused otherwise I would be returning home without a job! I remember when the first day of racing arrived Nick and I felt sick with nerves, this is a feeling we both normally welcome as we seem to sail better and more accurately whilst under pressure. We started the event well and after 3 races we were equal 1st overall. In the 4th race we were coming 3rd going onto the last downwind, the wind had picked up to 35 knots and there were big waves, the two boats in front of us did not put the spinnaker up but we were confident in our boat handling so thought we would go for it. Unfortunately it was not our boat handling we needed to worry about as soon as I set the spinnaker the force snapped the mast in half and left us sitting in the bottom of the boat covered in rigging. This was the first time we had snapped a mast in 7 years and the enormity of the situation hit us immediately. We could discard the race but it meant we had to complete another 6 races without another bad race, winning the event was going to be almost impossible and beating the then reigning world champions Asher and Willis was looking hard. That night we stayed at the marina till 10pm rigging a new mast, we sailed as safe and consistently as possible often having to come back from conservative starts and in the next three races we got 3,7,7 pushing us back up to 2nd overall. Then in the eighth race disaster struck we came around the windward mark and hoisted the spinnaker which caught on the spreader and ripped in half, we dropped to last place on the downwind and finished 34th which we had to count. We rigged up a new spinnaker and finished 6th in the next race and 2nd in the final medal race. This gave us 8th overall with our British rivals finishing 11th we had done enough to gain selection for the Pre Olympic regatta. We both felt proud when the regatta finished, we knew despite the overall position we had given one of our best performances. Our worst result was a 7th in any race without gear failure and without it we would have been comfortably in the medals and challenging the Australian winners. The best news of all was that I managed to get home before the baby was born and 10 days later we had a boy named Samuel (Sammy as he is now fondly known).

After preparing for a strong wind venue we now had three weeks to prepare for the light winds of China. We both went on a big diet, this generally involved a lot of aerobic fitness and reducing the amount of fat and carbohydrate in our diet replacing it with fruit and vegetable, it was hard to start with but got easier once we were in the habit. We lost 6kg’s between us by the time we went to China. We sailed well at the regatta and finished 2nd behind the Australian World champions Wilmot and Page, we were 23 points ahead of 3rd and last year we won by 20 points so we are in a good position going into the final year. The British team overall sailed very well winning 5 golds and 1 silver with other sailors going close to the top 3.

The announcement was made on the 18th September that we along with 7 other classes had been selected for the Olympic Games, it was a huge relief and we feel very lucky and honoured to be able to represent Great Britain at a third Olympic Games and try to win a gold. Now we have nearly a full year to fully prepare for the fairly unique conditions of China. I feel sorry for all the teams that didn’t get selected, some of them are of an incredibly good standard. Nic Asher and Elliot Willis are a very good 470 team and we hope that we can carry on training together towards both of our goals.

Since Olympic selection we have already competed in another event, the Skandia Sail For Gold regatta held at the 2012 Olympic venue, Weymouth. We won the event and it was good training for the future as we had to sail the boat in 2nd place to the back of the fleet, something we had done to us during the 2004 Olympics.

We now have two weeks at home free from sailing and are currently looking for supporting sponsors to get involved with us for the final year building up to the Olympics and beyond. On October 8th we are traveling back to China to spend some time training at the venue before Chinas bitterly cold winter arrives.
Thank you for all your support.

Best wishes

Joe

On behalf of Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield