Image credit:
segel-bilder.de
"YouTube is filling up with thrilling videos of Nacra 17s flying along at high speed only to take off without warning and crash back down again."
1984, and Carolijn Brouwer and Sebastien Godefroid, whose high-point was 2nd place at a windy 2007 Tornado World Championship in Portugal. But these mixed partnerships have been the exception in Olympic sailing thus far, and indeed are the exception in all Olympic sport, which tends to segregate the sexes. It’s going to be a fascinating experiment. For a while it was suggested that the 470 might become a compulsory mixed class. When I polled some of the leading lights in the class at the 470 European Championships in Istanbul a few years ago, and asked if they would be happy to race in a mixed-gender 470, it was as though I had committed heresy to even raise the idea. Of course, if you’re already at the top of your game racing in a settled partnership in a single-sex team, why would you want to rock the boat? The incumbent athletes are not always the best people to ask when testing out new ideas. On the other hand, by definition the teams now competing in the Nacra 17 have chosen this path. And when you think about it, it’s hardly a step away from the norm. Isn’t mixed-sex sailing much more representative of what goes on in sailing around the world every weekend? Boyfriend and girlfriend sailing together, husband and wife? Of course a bad gybe and capsize could take some couples one step closer to divorce, but still, this is the way that many of us spend our amateur sailing lives. Surely not so bad to see an Olympic version of the same team dynamic? Cammas finds himself up against fellow Volvo Ocean Race skipper Iker Martinez, who has won a gold and silver at previous Olympics in the 49er
July 2013 64
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