Another Productive Summer in Europe
Another long summer of training is now coming to an end and with it a chance to look back at all the progress made and skills learned. The summer can be split into two parts, pre-Olympics and post-Olympics, each providing its own unique challenge and as a whole proving to be a great program as we near towards the World Championships later this Year.
The month of June and first half of July was spent in Malta with a great group of U23 sailors who were gathered for a pre-Olympic camp to put the finishing touches on before my teammates Vishnu (India) and Aly (Egypt) were off to represent their countries at the games. Among the group were top sailors from Sweden, Ireland, and the UK as well as myself and fellow Canadian Norman Struthers. With the Games coming up we were very focused on starting, spending up to three hours every day practicing time on distance and developing accuracy in the middle of very long start lines. While not the most physical of drills in the 40+ degree summer heat it could only be described as tedious, and mind numbing. Nonetheless absolutely essential and by the end of the block we all noticed major improvements which is always nice to see. As a matter of chance, the majority of the month ended up being light offshore winds from the south meaning that a secondary focus which emerged over the month was tactics and fleet management in very unstable breeze. This is something which was a major weakness of mine when I first arrived in Malta a little over a year ago and so I was very pleased to see it to be another area of major improvement. Oftentimes when you are training for extended periods doing more or less the same thing every day you can be too close to the action to see improvements which have been slowly happening. Only when you take a step back or enter a new training environment are you able toaccurately compare your current self to your past self and see how far you have actually come. This was the case for me in regard to my tactics in unstable breeze and it was a very nice surprise to see the progress I have made.
With June coming to an end and my coach and two main training partners off to the games soon I needed a plan for July and August. While getting home was top of my list it seemed that the rest of the Canadians would not be around Toronto to train with and so while it would be nice the better option ended up being to head off to the south coast of the UK for some lovely British summer weather. Norman, who I grew up sailing with on the Ontario Sailing Team, now attends the University of Southampton and had an empty room for the summer in his student house. He also had a second laser which I could borrow and there was a strong group of young British sailors we could join in with for training.
This was perfect. Since the second week of July now Norman and I have been between Stokes Bay and Weymouth joining in with the brits who weren’t off to Tokyo. The focus for this camp was mainly fitness as originally it was going to be the final push leading up to the world championships in Barcelona however unfortunately we found out a few weeks ago that due to travel restrictions in Spain the worlds have been postponed to the second week of November. With that in mind we have shifted our priorities around a little, still focusing on fitness but also with a strong secondary focus on downwind feeling. The unique wind against tide conditions often seen in Stokes bay provide a unique opportunity to get in a high ratio of downwind sailing to upwind sailing making it the perfect location for this.
Worlds being postponed is yet another curveball that covid has thrown our way, luckily at this point I have gotten pretty good at making adjustments on the fly and getting on with things. This however did leave a big hole in my schedule that was proving difficult to fill. With Norman starting to gear back up for the start of his Uni year and Vishnu, Aly and Alex off on post Olympics vacation still, this gap proved to be the perfect size for an overdue trip home. This would allow me to push hard for the rest of my time in the UK, have a nice 3 week “break” back home, still obviously focusing a lot on fitness, and then get back to training with my group for the two months leading up to the World Championships.
As I write this now, I am in Weymouth and the UK national Championships start tomorrow, it has been a few months since I raced last, so I am very excited to get to the start line of a 50 boat fleet. There are quite a few strong sailors who will be here this week, but I am confident in the work I have been doing over the past year and I think we could well be in for a strong finish here. (Knock on wood)
Nationals are five days of racing from the 14th-18th and then I am home to Toronto on the 19th for three weeks with friends and family. Following that I am back to Europe to regroup with my team and my boat on the famous Lake Garda where we will be competing in the Italian championships (somewhere I have been wanting to sail for many years now). From there we will be heading to Palma de Mallorca for the Princess Sofia regatta which is always one of the strongest Olympic class regattas in the world. Then after a few weeks of training in Palma we will (fingers crossed) be off to Barcelona for the World Championships.
It really is funny how everything tends to work out. A few weeks ago, I was feeling quite down as my carefully procured plan leading up to worlds had been thrown out the window and in its place was this looming gap in my program. But just a little bit of re organizing and I believe now we have come up with a plan that is even stronger than before. I suppose if there is one thing everyone can take away from the pandemic, it is the ability to adapt and think on the fly.
Thank you to everyone for the continued support, if you are interested in following my results at the coming UK National Championships results can be found at https://ilca.uk/2021-ukla-nationals
Also, as I am in a constant state of fundraising to fuel my Olympic dream there is an amazing new way of supporting my Olympic campaign at no extra cost to yourself. If you or anyone you know are looking to buy or sell property anywhere in Canada and are in need of a real estate agent please take a look at the Athlete Influencer Program. (https://www.facebook.com/athleteinfluencer/) Chris Cook the creator of the program is a former Canadian Olympic sailor and is now one of the top grossing real estate agents in the Toronto area. He has hand selected a group of top real estate agents from across the country who are willing to give a portion of their sales commission to Olympic campaigns. If you are thinking about buying or selling property it is the absolute easiest way to support my campaign and you are guaranteed to be set up with a truly top notch agent. Just send me an email and I will get the ball rolling.
Until next time,
James