SAILING ENERGY
Update
Unbearably sad… with a couple of slightly better race finishes in his qualification, 18-year-old Tongan kite-foiler JJ Rice should have been competing this month at Paris 2024. Instead, having just missed selection, he returned home for a break and was killed free diving – something the young Tongan had been doing for years
I was super-excited to head back to the same atoll, where very little had changed, breathtaking scenery and just the sound of the wind whispering through the palm trees when we switched off the engine after dropping anchor. Three days later we were heading off at dawn, but when pulling
up the anchor the chain jerked tight, snagging something significant on the seabed 14m below. Of the four of us onboard, the two women were reluctant to swim as we had seen sharks nearby, and the skipper had longterm sinus problems; so I volunteered to pop a mask on and swim down to eyeball the problem, with a knife on a lanyard tied to my shorts in case of any nosey sharks. The problem was that the anchor chain had wrapped itself criss-
cross fashion over a huge mushroom-shaped coral head during the night. Gently motoring back and forwards for the next hour trying to unwrap the mess wasn’t successful and, as we didn’t have scuba gear, I suggested that I swim down again and see if I could help. Making good progress over the first three dives, I stood on the
coral mound and manhandled the anchor chain off, down onto the soft sand. Taking long breaks between each swim, I calmed my mind and my breathing. Swimming down wearing powerful fins, I could see it would take another couple of dives to get everything free. Now standing on the seabed, I lifted a length of chain level with
my chest, and a long section of it slipped away down onto the sand – meaning that if I stayed just a little bit longer I could get it all done now and save myself another couple of dives. Which I did – but freeing the last of the links I realised I had gone too far, and stayed down too long. Looking up at the sparkling surface 14m above, I pushed extra
hard off the sand aiming for the sunlight – only to have the loop of the knife lanyard jam hard into a coral crevice below me. Now I was really in trouble. Already short of breath, with my brain shouting for oxygen after that exertion, I now had to stop and swim even deeper, to ease out the trapped lanyard from the coral, then start again for the surface. I am very fortunate that I can count as a good friend a multiple stage winner of the Tour de France. Chatting with him on the brutality
18 SEAHORSE
of that event, he describes two weeks into the tour when you are racing up the insanity that is Alpe d’Huez or Mont Ventoux, and you have to suddenly sprint to stay in the hunt – when most of your body is in agony and screaming for rest. Right then, he says, is when you become a different person. Tied to the seabed I became a different person. Knowing the
briefest moment of panic would be fatal, I carefully extracted the line, calmed my mind and then pushed hard, knowing this would be really close. Finning hard, I started to exhale around 5m from the surface. With my consciousness closing in and vision fading to a small dot like a camera aperture contracting, I recognised that I was blacking out. Breaking the surface with momentum, I breathed again, and over the months and years since realised just what a really, really, stupid thing I had started… and then carried on doing. Over the weekend the whole horror of that moment was revisited
when my wife sat me down and said the young Tongan kite-foiler JJ Rice had been killed free diving at his beloved home of Ha‘apai. JJ was 18 years old. We watched him grow up over many trips to Ha‘apai, and when he was campaigning for Tonga to secure an Olympic spot we house-sat for his family, looking after their horses, dogs and chickens, next to a sparkling lagoon in paradise where JJ trained hard to compete in Paris. He just missed initial selection then attended the Last Chance Regatta in Hyères, where he posted, ‘Everyone was pushing to the limit to qualify, but after a few mistakes on my part my Olympic dream for this cycle has come to an end. But with another Olympic cycle just around the corner in 2028 I will be training as hard as possible. I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported, mentored, given me a couch to stay on and pushed me to my absolute limit.’ So what is my point here? Well, when something like this happens
the people who are close to you, love and admire you, are utterly crushed and broken 10 times over. JJ’s parents and sister are only just beginning to understand that JJ is not with them any more. Seeing that utter internal destruction of the people who were
close to him, maybe it would be good to have a pause moment. To pause, reflect and maybe even have a bit of an audit. Now I am
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