TEAM PROFILE
Silja Lehtinen and her team fighting it out in Weymouth.
GOING FOR GOLD: SILJA LEHTINEN’S FINNISH TEAM
The most important women’s
match racing event this year was unquestionably the Pre-Olympic test event at Weymouth, back in August. It was won by the Finnish team of Silja Lehtinen, Silja Kanerva and Mikaela Wulff, and ended 3-2 after an unbelievably tight final. Silja started match racing in 2003, but they’ve only been sailing together as a team for 18 months. They are all in their early to mid-twenties, but have still been chasing the Olympic dream for a while. We talked to Silja Lehtinen:
How did you come together as a team? I used to sail 29ers with Silja K, but then in Ynglings we sailed in different teams. So it was nice to start sailing together again (for the match racing). I knew Miksu just from regattas, she sailed 470s before and is an outgoing and fun person, so I thought we would make a good team.
How do you organise your training? We have trained a lot with our American training partners, that’s Anna Tunnicliffe’s team, down in Miami. In Helsinki there is also a match race centre with six Elliotts, so we have good training facilities at home as well.
What’s the single most important skill or attribute for a successful match race skipper? There is no single skill, like sailing in general, match racing is all about balance, and you need to be good at a lot of
MATCH RACING 360° | NOVEMBER 2011
things. It’s really important to be a good sailor in general and feel the boat. Then you also need to have a sort of will to do battle, and to face your opponent eye-to-eye. But in the end, it’s all about team work, so you need to understand how people and a group of people work together best, and create a positive and encouraging environment.
What other sailing achievements do you have outside match racing as an individual? I was eleventh at the Beijing Olympics in Ynglings. Before that I won gold in the Byte in 2001, and at the 29er Worlds in 2006, and I was 4th at the Youth Worlds in 2002.
Tell us about the final for the gold medal against Ekaterina Skudina? I didn’t realize Ekaterina’s team had got a penalty (for pumping) at the start of the last downwind leg, when they were behind us. They then rolled us, but they dove deep afterwards, so we started rolling them again. Suddenly they luffed us, and I jumped to hike out
hard, but missed the hiking straps. I only caught a bungee with my left foot, so I was hanging from that and the tiller extension. Miksu held me from falling completely, and Silja K picked me up. We then gybed towards the line and saw Ekaterina starting a penalty turn right at the finish that I wasn’t expecting. They got caught head-to-wind for a second too long, and we just managed to pass them one meter from the line. It was pretty unbelievable.
Are you confident going into next year’s Games of repeating your gold medal success? Match racing is such a close game and all the teams are getting very, very good, so the results keep changing a lot from regatta to regatta, and no one can be too confident.
What are your plans after the next Olympics? We’ll see. We all love skiffs and have sailed them a lot, but let’s see (the Women’s skiff is a new class for the 2016 Olympics, but the match racing has been dropped).
(L-R) Mikaela Wulff, Silja Lehtinen, Silja Kanerva and Annina Takala.
What do you see as the future for Women’s Match Racing after the next Olympics? I think women’s match race regattas were a lot of fun even before the Olympics. So I hope that kind of fun and social racing will keep going. I think it also has potential for a world tour at the top level, but that will need someone to put quite a lot of effort into organizing it. But definitely I would like to see that happening!
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