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2008 interview with Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield

You are now selected for 2008 Olympic games, your third Olympics, how does that feel?

Nick: It was a great feeling to win the selection trials for the games, in some countries selection is relatively easy, but in the U.K we have a very strong 470 squad and so knew winning the single slot was the first major hurdle.
Joe: It seems amazing that this will be our third Olympics, the good news is we know how to prepare for a Games and won’t be distracted by the enormity of the event itself.

You started 2008 with a two events in Australia, Sail Melbourne followed by the 470 World championships, how did that go?

Joe: It could have gone better! In truth we knew we wouldn’t be at our absolute best, but obviously still wanted to do as well as possible. Sail Melbourne went well and we won overall. We seemed to carry this form on into the World championship and were winning at the half way stage, but it was very close and we sailed badly on the penultimate day, which cost us any opportunity of winning a medal.
Nick: The good news was we were fast on all of the light wind days, which is relevant for the Olympics and our British team mates Nic Asher and Elliot Willis won. This is obviously great for them but also good for us as they use very similar settings and equipment to us.

What’s next on your program?

Nick: Our next event is Hyeres regatta, before that we are training with the British squad in Valencia. It is great to have such a strong training squad. We have made a few equipment changes that we think will be better for light winds and we are spending a lot of time working on technique and boat speed.

How will you go about trying to peak for the Beijing Olympics in August?

Joe: Our training is structured around sailing in conditions similar to China and making sure we are comfortable in the light conditions we expect. We will balance our training with competing at international regattas to make sure we are race sharp. We are making changes to our equipment so it is optimized for 3-10 knots. We will also be losing quite a lot of weight. Nick and I are fortunate that we both have quite small frames so can get an advantage over our competitors in light winds by being lighter weight.

Which teams do you sight as your main competition?

Nick: To be honest it is always difficult to pick out the key opposition in the 470 class as there are so many teams capable of winning. The Australian team Wilmot and Page have won 3 world championships and the pre Olympics, the Israeli and Portuguese are also very consistent. Then you have teams like the Italians and French who are good in the light winds.
Joe: We don’t think about the opposition too much, we know what we need to do by the summer and that is where our thoughts lie.

Do you have any plans for after the Olympic games?

Joe: We don’t think about what we will do after the Olympics too much as it will be heavily affected by how we do.
Nick: I think it is best left till after the summer then we will make a call on it, for now I just want to try my hardest to win a gold.