Changing of the guard?


With less than a year to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic regatta (seriously) Andy Rice has been watching some switcheroos among the usual suspects...


Could China finish as top nation at next year’s Olympic Regatta? That’s the indica- tion from this summer’s Olympic Test Regatta, dubbed ‘Ready Steady Tokyo’. The Chinese were the only team to win two gold medals, both of them in the RS:X windsurfer divisions – Yunxiu Lu winning the women and Mengfan Gao winning the men. Maybe you’ve never heard of Lu but she is a rapidly emerging force in women’s windsurfing, with an enviably strong record on the Olympic waters of Enoshima. While China is a world leader on the


stand-up board, in the sit-down classes it’s not looking particularly strong. Great Britain might have only finished an unprecedented 10th on the medal table at Ready Steady Tokyo, yet there were six reasons to be cheerful in Japan, four of


56 SEAHORSE


them silver and two of them bronze. Giles Scott ‘only’ getting bronze was


one of the surprises of Enoshima, if only for the fact that we – and most of his Finn rivals – have come to expect the Briton to win every regatta in which he competes. But bear in mind Scott now only has lim- ited time out of his day job, working for Ineos Team UK in its build-up to the 2021 America’s Cup, and bronze really isn’t too bad. Provided he gets the necessary time out during the final push towards the Tokyo Games, the reigning Olympic champion will start next year’s competi- tion as firm favourite for gold. With that said, Zsombor Berecz’s victory


at Ready Steady Tokyo follows on from the Hungarian’s victory in the Finn at last year’s world championship in Denmark. He put on a dominant display in Enoshima, followed by the still improving Nicholas Heiner of the Netherlands. However, a week later, competing in a weaker line-up at the Hempel Sailing World Cup, Berecz was unable to get on the podium, finishing fifth while Heiner upgraded to gold. Heiner, whose father Roy won Finn bronze


at Atlanta 1996, increasingly looks like the most consistent threat to Scott, closely fol- lowed by New Zealand’s Andy Maloney who was fourth at Ready Steady Tokyo. Great Britain’s other gold medal winner


from Rio 2016 is still at the top of her game in the Women’s 470. Following Saskia Clark’s retirement from Olympic campaigning after Rio, Mills teamed up with first-time campaigner Eilidh McIn- tyre, whose father Mike helmed his way to an astonishing gold medal victory in the Star class at the impossibly windy and wavy Olympic regatta in Pusan in 1988. By her own admission Mills struggles to


switch on her competitive spark the way she used to when she was younger. Not that 31 years is particularly old, but Mills definitely considers herself a veteran of Olympic campaigning. McIntyre’s youth- ful energy clearly helps push her helm for- wards and together they won the 470 World Championship which took place in Japan just before the Ready Steady regatta. Mills and McIntyre went into the Medal


Race of Ready Steady Tokyo level pegging with the French team of Camille Lecointre


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