Olympic sailing World Cup stop #2 Palma

Tie up on http://www.trofeoprincesasofia.org/en for photos, results, and live Olympic sailing.

If your timing is convenient then watch Sarah and JC this week as they continue their journey.

So this looks like the first big N17 event for the Olympic Mixed Class. Why not jump the gun and draw sweeping conclusions after three races sailed... (its the internet after all)

No clear trend in how the F/M sorts on the boat ... a quick eyeball seems to be about 50 perecnt of the teams going one way.. 50 % the other.

Call that an initial win for the N17 Class design and the Olympic Committe selection process (cough) ...

Results over time will test the notion of what the optimal configuration is. (My prediction is 300 lbs crew weight with the woman at the helm one year into the quad.)

One very clear trend is that NONE of the competitors are from any new countries competing in Olympic Sailing... Sadly, the grow the Olympic Sport is not looking good at the start where you might have thought some countries would put their toe in the water and see how competitive they are. Perhaps more countries will show up at the worlds in the summer... ISAF made the case that the mixed Olympic multihull could spread the olympic movement... right now... its the usual suspects but it is too early to call.

The two new events... mixed multis and womans skiff have about the same number of competitors. The demand for woman racing high performance boats is huge... The ISAF goal of gender equitiy is being hit out of the park.

One of the USA Sarah's that sailed well at the Miami OCR is doing very well in.... 470s.... (How does that song go... Fathers teach your daughters to Sail)

So... that is all for absolutely premature.. jump the gun sweeping conclusions!

Sarah N and John C are in 10th of 34 boats after 3 races... go USA!

http://thomtouw.photoshelter.com/ga...cra-17/G0000mGuQf1sMOwE/C0000SDS56Of3o1c

all images © Thom Touw Photography

It is worth noting that the Sarah you are referring to, Sarah Lihan, was a 2012 OIympian crewing in the 470. She sailed the 2012 games with Amanda Clark. This week she is sailing with Sydney Bolger, who was the 2012 Women's College Sailor of the Year. They are currently leading Annie Haeger... who was the 2011 Women's College Sailor of the year!

My take is SN/JC are having a pretty dang good first event on the world stage. Look at the competition, you have Mischa Heemskerk one place above Team USA...

College sailing means little on the international stage Jeff this is the 2016 Olympic cycle not a repeat of the 2012 Olympic cycle.

I'm merely pointing out that our best young sailors are making the jump into Olympic Sailing, which is a very good thing. Read into that what you will, but I still thing college sailing has value, but only as a component of preparation.

As for M/F its pretty windy and the top 2 are women at the helm. More than 1/2 round out most of the top 10 also. Interesting that all 3 NED teams are also W at the helm.

This is just the start!

Jeff fair point I agree there is value in college sailing from a tactics and racing rules standpoint, we all know getting young blood into performance boats ASAP is key to the U.S's performance on the world stage.

Very interesting on the W helm stats but not too surprising, sail plan is powered up despite the current aluminum rigs!

Beth said it's because no woman can trust a man behind her.

I've been following the twitter feed and results very closely the last couple days. One thing that is striking, and present across most of our sailors (Bolger/Lihan might be an exception), is that we underperform in big breeze and do very well in light/shifty conditions. Just look at the results for today (light) compared to the last two days and it is very obvious.

There could be a couple reasons for this:
1. Our primary Olympic training site (Miami) is very light
2. Most college sailing venues are light and flat
3. Junior programs are shying away from sailing in big breeze (maybe, not sure)
4. We need to suck it up and just freakin' send it when it's big out there

I noticed the same trend at the F18 Worlds- our crews did substantially better in the lighter breeze compared to the Europeans who walked away in the breeze.

Good news is that we have a good foundation for the light air skills, and developing heavy air skills comes down to seeking out the conditions and not being afraid to go for it. Maybe we should all train in Hawaii!

or San Francisco.

The observation is that your success is based on your history.... Growing up in big breeze means that you will be a good big breeze sailor... OR vice versa... growing up sailing light air equals a light air sailor. So, this is basically a trivial observation.

The key question is.. How much time on the water and coaching are needed to compensate for the lack of experience and skill for US sailors who don't train in much breeze. And can you go both ways with this.

I have no idea where the US Team encamped for Weymouth.... Clearly it did not work. So far ... our track record stinks at this game.

So... Do you conclude that it takes too long to get the heavy air skills up to world class standards? Is it even possible to turn a weakness into a strength in a quad?
I don't know.

Of course, the US tends to focus exclusively on the next Olympic venue... Generally, these events are supposed to be light air venues.. and so Miami was deemed the right location for a training center. This is an example of working on your strength... not working on your weakness.
Rio is supposed to be a light air venue... Do you make the case that all the US has to do is qualify the country in the heavy air EU events ,... you don't have to actually win events there... So, Continue to train for your strength the light air venue of Rio.

I don't think there are easy answers on this one.
Personally, I think that time in the Olympic sailing style from a young age is fundamental to success... Then you work on your weaknesses and maintain your strengths.

The first year of results for the two new classes Woman's skiffs and N17s could shed some light on this issue of sailing background and how it matches up to performance results in breeze or light air.

Today another light one over at Palma, Friday and Saturday will see considerably more wind.
Wind on Saturday will be sideshore/offshore so waves should be ok.




Race 7 just got underway: "Start race 7, Nacra 17 at 11:13h. Wind 280º, 5 to 7 knots."

Sweet! Sarah and JC got a bullet in race 4F! Now in 4th overall.

According to US sailing twitter feed, wind speed was 14kts.

Can someone explain the half-arsed scoring system
The first 6 races were just practise?

Anyone have an reason the Sara/JC DSQ in race F3?
Scoring is wacked. Hope this is something just for this regatta?

Broke rule 11 on an offset leg.

See here: http://www2.trofeoprincesasofia.org/en/default/toa/protestsummary

After rounding the offset mark NED 044 was third. Her spinaker fell down in water, her bow
dived breaking spinaker pool. NED 044 was on close hauled course on starboard tack without
speed six boat lenghts from the offset mark. After FRA 039 cleared the offset mark she was on
colission course with NED 044 and overlapped to leeward of USA 104, both of them on
starboard tack. FRA 039 did not hoist her spinaker. USA 104 bore away. There was contact
with damage between FRA 039 port floater bow and NED 044 starboard side of starboard
floater. NED 044 has two holes on starboard side of starboard floater, one smaller on the bow
and one bigger one meter back.

Conclusion: By not keeping clear of FRA 039 and bearing off, USA 104 infringed rule 11 causing FRA 039
to hit NED 044. FRA 039 infringed rule 11 and 14 but is exonerated under rule 64.1 (a) since
she was compelled to break a rule by USA 104.

So my take: Sara/JC hoisted and couldn't keep height with the spi flying to keep from going down on NED and causing a chain of contact.

That seemed to be the case, pretty extensive damage on NED's bow:

I've sent Optis in 30 knots in Newport, I've never been thanked as much at any regatta, including cat regattas (which says a lot, since I'm surrounded by friends there). Some parents even stopped as they drove out of Ft. Adams.

They all said the same thing: too many RCs and OAs keep everyone ashore when it gets over 12-15 knots. Only works with a strong team and great support from the parents and coaches on the water...

Mike

Edit: Officially, the wind was solid in the low 20s, but there were some gnarly gusts at the weather mark. The kids were troopers!

It's a long road. Still very early in the olympic cycle. it will be interesting to see who comes to the forefront over the next 3 years. I suspect there will be several team moving to and displaced from the top before this is over.

Absolutely. At this event the teams with cat experience (predictably) are doing very well. I don't expect this to be the case by the end of the quad. I think teams with prior international campaign/olympic experience will adapt to the boat and their experience will show through. Just my opinion.

REALLY!

This has been the standard US position.... take an All American college 420 sailor and coach em up....in 49ners or Cats or windsurfers etc. I think it is just wrong.

Prior international experience is also over rated.. Bundy tried a short go at helming the 49ner when the T was dropped.. did not work. The number of sailors who medal in two very different classes are few and far between.
In fact, I will argue that the AC 45 experience tends to suggest that the instincts to race the high performance boats must be developed from an early age. Terry Hutchinson is a great world class match racer and sailor but he was replaced with a 49ner helm. Terry just could not make up the countless hours on the helm of a boat that is super high performance.

I am going to go with Gladwalls theory that mastery, is at its core, about hours doing the exact task.

The idea that a great sailor can change disciplines and win a gold is not a sure thing....

It's about understanding the precise location of "the limit" that you can push a boat. It's very different from platform to platform. I'm incredibly uneasy driving a J22 with the kite up in breeze because I don't know where things start to fall apart. I'm going to have to broach the thing a couple of times to figure it out.

I don't think there's some hard uncrossable line with regards to experience and skill on various boats - but I do think that the amount of experience required to obtain the enough of the human feel/touch to push a particular type of boat to the edge is often under rated.

It was an unfortunate accident. It was a little too full on to have the kite up that quickly

I don't know what happened to all of my edits to my post above, but there was more there...

Anyway, that interview is quite telling. Sarah looks utterly disgusted. Not sure of the timing of the video relative to the protest, or if something else was going on.

Hopefully, they aren't falling into the mentaility that they're playing catchup (which it clearly sounds like that's exactly how they feel). They agreed that racing against these top sailors, in Europe with the coaches, is improving their game. Sadly, they intend to come home and not race or practice over there until the next major event...

As for the cat vs. mono sailing background: The AC45s bolstered the idea that any high-caliber sailor could jump on a cat and win against folks from the cat sailing background. I think that primarily works because of the size of the boats, and the match racing experience; neither of which exist in the beach-cat Olympic regatta.

Said another way, while all those dinghy sailors are learning how to sail these beach cats, the beach cat guys will be learning how to make them go faster than they already race them.

The old Hobie racing books don't lie. The key to winning beach cat regattas is going fast, preferably on the favored side of the course. Boat on boat tactics pale in comparison to the importance of just plain going fast. (Somewhat over-simplified, but I'm sure you get the idea.)

Mike

I can tell you that this isn't the case.

As one of JC's best friends, trying to find time to invite him and his new fiancee over for dinner is impossible since he's ALWAYS training.

;P

The next ISAF WC event is only two weeks away btw (April 20-27):
http://www.sailing.org/worldcup/events/Hyeres-2013.php

The next official event after that is Qingdao, China (October) although somehow I doubt many Euro teams will make their way over there.

If you are a talented sailor making the transition from any other class to multis will be doable, especially when paired with either an experienced multi helm or crew.
The female helm currently at the top of the leaderboard has only been sailing on cats for about 6 months now, the second Dutch female helm for not much longer
and is currently 4th which proves that you dont necesarilly have to be a "born" catsailor to be succesful.

ah... but I am not arguing cat sailor... just high performance apparent wind machines.... skiffs and cats are different then 470s and lasers. boards/kites will be different again.

There are so few woman cat sailors at the elite level before the Mixed Multihull discipline... it will be tough to argue either way... if Carolihn Brower competes and wins... does it prove my point??? Not really.

The virtually complete lack of Usual suspects in the class was appealing for many countries..... everyone started off at about the same level and you have a shot.

I would look at the woman's skiff ranks... they had a bit more of a pipeline before woman's skiffs made the games.

One other Cat example came to mind... the Swedes had a guy with a medal in stars (I think) who jumped onto the Tornado for his next campaign... it did not go well (Two or three cycles ago). mind you he had 1000s of hours into the game and a medal as well.. but you need to be putting that time into the exact skills you need.

Mark,

I'll agree that the apparent wind background is very important. Neither my helm nor I had ever sailed cats before buying our F18, but Brooks (my helm) had sailed 29ers at a very high level in high school. We found the transition to the cat to be pretty straightforward. We also benefited from the help of a lot of good teams.

I think this is a HUGE set of points to make.... LOTS of sailors and Good sailors to help are key..

I think this is the US achilles... Its a huge country and the critical mass is just not there... moreover... you don't have a lot of the former elite sailors still in the game all be it at much less intensity.

Just going from the interview, that is what they said. They will not be sailing OVER THERE.

I think that they need more of it, not less. Just my opinion, again based on what I heard in the interview.

Mike

Three Dutch teams in the medal race and two on the podium, nice results for such a small country
Congrats to JC on his 10th place as well.

Interesting to see how young this fleet is with almost none of the "old" T sailors from the 2008 games present (Mitch, Bundy, etc).

I have it on good authority that their was photographic evidence that they had broken overlap and should not have been penalized,but they chose not to pursue it any farther so they could maintain focus on the sailing.Kudos to them. Also sounds like team syndicate politics may be in full play.

I agree, sometimes, no one "wins" a protest.

Mike

Seems a lot of folks pissed about it. . .
Is ISAF’s new scoring system at the World Cup events crap?