Steve Fosset is a rich guy who can apply himself to attain goals, Ellen Mc however is an astonnishing young competitor who gives all and more to win. While filming herself racing around the World (against the very best of solo men) she set the camera up in heavy seas and recorded herself going up to the top of the mast, alone and while being smashed against the mast very high up just kept on task and did the job. To suggest she was just in the right place at the right time is naive. IMHO She is a she is not just a winner but a WORLD beater and there is not a soul in this discussion who could stand against her at what she does..... If you can, let me know and I'll wave you off at the dock. As far as money is concerned what she does demands it but when the money is spent she has to get on the giant tri and manage it in every sense of the world through "hell and high water" and it is tallent and big balls that gets it done.
Remember, she has to attain the crazy speeds day and night and does not have the other 10 men around her to do their bit as the Volvo guys do.
On your tod, head down, bum up.
give it up for her, she earned it.

The fact that a French group doesn't respect an English person shouldn't be much of a surprise.

Is it true that the high speed trains going through the Chunnel have saturated the southern England coast with the smell of garlic? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I cannot agree, It was the French who took Ellen under their wing and who flocked the quaysides shouting the phrase "Ellen, à donf" (Go for it)
She was 2nd in the Vendée Globe for goodness sake <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

With you on that Dermot. Hell, Ellen's virtually living in France nowadays because she's so welcome there!

Hi Rolf,
While I understand your theory, there still remains the mysterious few who manage to sail faster / better than most of us mere mortals, while not doing as much preparation or training as you might expect them to do to be as good as they are. I`ve seen a few of these guys, some sail very infrequently yet appear in the top end of the fleet without explanation, I believe they have a feel for sailing that we might only gain by a lot of training and practice, but they have it without having to do the same training - so if they put in the same effort as us mere mortals, will STILL end up being faster / better than the average weekend sailor can aspire to. I would call this "talent", and believe it plays a large role in how successful a sailor can be if he applies his mind to it.
I have a friend who is sailing mad - he trains and sails every opportunity he gets, and is a very good sailor, but he is consistently in the middle of the fleet, whichever boat he is sailing. He spends a lot of time tuning his boat, getting it right, and will appear mid-fleet on most occasions - he has flashes of brilliance, and would win many 30knot plus races, if the RC didn`t pull the plug on those, as he excels in strong wind. I would call this guy the average weekend racer. He is by many accounts a better sailor than many of the sailors who beat him, if that makes sense at all.
You also get the sailors (and I`ve seen this) who are top 10 in a 100 boat fleet, who behave rather oddly. One bought a Hobie 16, and found the streamers on his mainsail and jib annoying while learning to sail, so he removed them - all of them. He then placed 6th at Hobie Nationals (89 boats) in his first year sailing, and it was his first regatta. This doesn`t easily fit the idea that training and preparation ensures success, and talent is a myth. He then only raced at Nationals for many years and was consistently top 10, while others trained, raced every regatta, and failed to make the Gold fleet.
Others like Paul Lagesse, an ex-Hobie 14 sailor, stopped sailing cats in favour of kitesurfing and windsurfing many years ago. He sailed the SA Champs as a qualifying event for the Worlds, found crew at the Worlds who he had not sailed with before, and placed 5th. He hadn`t really campaigned seriously for years before with the same crew, which many others, who failed to even qualify, had done. I beleive this is talent.
It may be sad to admit it, but I will probably never be at that level, no matter how hard I try - which is why it`s important not to lose touch with the fact that we do this all for fun.

I agree with Steve on the issue of talent - it does indeed exist. I often refer to the "spectrum" of talent on the water in my area when talking about specific sailors at the top of the fleet and why I think they are there. One end of the spectrum is meticulous preparation, study, precise-to-the-mm settings, and by-the-book reaction to any combination of conditions - it takes talent to pull all that together into a successful race. On my private scale, Bob Curry owns that end of the "spectrum." The other end is fuzzy logic, feel on the tiller, seat-of-the-pants, stringing together pearls of luck and happenstance to win major events - nobody should be able to maintain consistent performance under those conditions, but there are undeniably guys that do - Kirk Newkirk reigns at that end of my private scale.

In between are all manner of top sailors in the southeast US that I frequently see (or have seen) on the racecourse. The perfect balance between these two extremes? IMO, Randy Smyth is a guy that stands at the fulcrum.

This thread has been really fun and interesting. Thanks for all the diff perspectives. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Yup Steve and John,

so when we consistently read about how all the winners are talented in media, you agree? (provoking a bit now..)


I dont deny that some sailors have a marked innate ability that make them fast. But not _all_ of the top sailors? I also believe that it must be possible to quantify exactly what they do and learn the same skill. There are limits to this of course, not everybody has the timing, reflexes and killer instinct to be a good boxer, let alone the motivation. But as I said earlier, I am a bit surprised over the lack of belief we sailors have in our own potential.

I dont believe we will bring this thread much further (and it has been excellent), but one small example. Norway is a country with a pop. of 4.6mill. Yet we have almost always ranked up there with the large countries in the winter olympics. The former USSR had a much larger gene pool to choose talent from, and used the means necessary to bring forth winners. Still Norway was able to bring medals, and lots of them, home, especially for cross country skiing, skating and other endurance events. As the gene pool is so much smaller in Norway, talent should be harder to find. After one disasterous event where we brought home just a bronze from the winter olympics, the goverment funded a centre for training and research to bring forth future top-athletes. Research done here proved that what counted the most was exercise, and the right type of exercise. Working professionally with your sport is what they say is the key to becoming a top athlete. So far, they are not so hung up in talent, but what kind of attitude coming athletes have to their sport. If you are willing to go trough the effort, you can become a winner.
Here is the medal statistics for the games in Athen:
http://www.abc.net.au/olympics/2004/results/medaltally.htm
And here is the total medal tally for all winter games:
http://www.darmoni.net/hivertot.htm

I dont think the gene pool in Norway is so good, and we certainly dont fund our athletes so well that you can live from it. Instead I believe that we have found a method and philosophy that bring forth winners if the athlete is willing to go trough with the effort and sacrifices.
(Norway won the gold in the Europe class dinghy, and placed fourth in 49ers. Yngling and Mistral did miserably, but looking on how many potential athletes we had in those classes in the 4 years before the Athen games, it was a very good result).

Steve said Steve, self fufilled prophacy? Since reading through this and going back and typing up a rather lenghty response to one of Rolf's comments that I decided not to post (too long and personal). I do believe that, if I wanted to be in the top 10 (anything), I could! Right now it just isn't worth the RISK <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Rolf said:

Nothing is impossible some things are highly unlikley but...

Thanks Guys and Gals

Yes, I agree when the media attributes a winner with "talent." For me personally, every sailor falls somewhere on that talent spectrum - from 100% preparation and drilling all the way across to 100% natural, effortless brilliance. Talent is an undefinable quality - I don't think it can be quantified, as you hope. You can take two people, put them through the same training program, and get two results... in fact you're likely to get two results. Even at the 100% prep and train side, it takes the ability to tie it all together, which is a different type of talent than what is associated with an instinct for the helm on the other side. At least in my opinion.

I think that we, in the cat sailing niche, often see predominantly one end of my imaginary scale - the "natural" side. I think this is because the training side is difficult, time consuming, and still not a guarantee for any given individual. I don't see this as a pessimistic view, either - I don't feel I have done my best in quite a while because I have been coasting on what little "natural ability" I have, letting my learned skills and physical fitness slide. Marriage and a toddler fills much of the time I used to devote to bettering myself as a sailor. But my Sara is growing up and my house is in order, so I made the decision early in the summer to start putting together a program again. My goal isn't another national championship, but to move up in the fleet by focusing on training and preparation. I don't think it is pessimistic for me to recognize that despite my best effort, I am unlikely to dominate the NAF-18 class. I'm not speaking of a single race or afternoon regatta, and I'm not talking about the attitude of "oh, here comes JC... he's better than me, so he's probably going to roll me here." I'm actually a very optimistic fellow. It makes it all the sweeter when, instead, I roll JC... even if he got it back half a leg later as we rounded the top right together. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I guess my personal bottom line is this, looking at the title of the thread "talent, or training and skill?" It takes a kind of talent to effectively apply training and skill. There are some that require little training or skill to consistently excell. That is the type of talent that likely stands out more in cat sailing.

Disclaimer - All of this may be complete hogwash and only applicable inside my noggin.

I believe talented sailors have an inate ability to come up big when it counts.When talking with Darren Smith(Hobie 16 Aust. Nat. champion).He said that at a club level he and Gavin Colby are on par,but at the international level Colby has the ability to turn it up a notch.I believe this is a talent only few are endowed with.

I have often seen this in Top Rugby. Some guys who are awesome in 1st class rugby just don't do it at test level and some solid people at 1st level become supermen in test forums.

I am a Kiwi and we look back to an Olympics in the last thirty years where we whacked Australia in the medal count.
This is unthinkable now. Whatever they put in the water since amassing only a couple of bronzes on that occasion has seen them get very bloody tallented.

I think that spotting tallent and fostering it also has a huge import and this may be the case for the Norwegian experience.

Perhaps the "try hard" sailors that only hit the middle of the fleet need strong mentoring from the top of the tallent base rather than just putting in hard work. A fellow on top gear was told by the Stig that while Ellen MacArther listened and followed his tuition that he did not. This man practiced all morning. She went fastest and he was the slowest ever. Wanting to win and working hard in your own paradigm can not make much gain if you cannot see the truth outside your own experience.

I am bringing this old thread back to life, as Darren Bundock just flagged his opinion on the gist of the talent vs. skill debate.

Ref: http://www.tornado.org/html/news_article.asp?ArticleID=190

Lots of other good stuff in the interview as well.

Very good read.... Cheers Rolf