News Around the World
98 per cent of Olympic athletes live a lean life, where an overseas event or a new sail take priority over many things, including physical therapy. WR: Even someone like Rob Scheidt, who is an amazing athlete and had a great longterm sponsor, must have had some tough years supporting himself early on. We are all much better funded these days but you still have to work out where the money is best spent. In terms of keeping the body together, the rule changes for free pumping in the 470 class and of course the Finn have made roles a lot more physical. If you look at the Finn sailors they are phenom- enal athletes (World Sailing – ahem, Blue) and that is where we are trying to transition my role in the 470. Plus we are seeing experienced helms changing crews to accommodate this role… So far Mat [Belcher] hasn’t got rid of me – which is good news. I enjoy the phys- ical side yet trying to be as skinny as I can makes it a challenge. SH: Are you the current normal size for a 470 crew? WR: I am on the tall side and there aren’t many taller than me. It’s a good feature of the class that luckily you can adapt the equipment to suit the crew. For example, the Rio 470 gold medallist is a lot shorter than me with a bigger upper body. SH: In the early days your coach Victor Kovalenko told me it was difficult to keep weight on you, as you were burning more calories than you could eat… WR: Sure, and it is a similar situation now with Josh Dawson, who does some training with us and struggles to keep the weight on, particularly when travelling, so we are aware of how to help him there. Because we don’t train and eat in a group – like, say, a rugby, football or hockey team – so much comes down to the individual and the more fatigued you get, that can strongly impact on what you bother to prepare for dinner. And cutting corners is not smart. Josh does, however, have the perfect legs for a 470; if I could buy his legs on eBay I would… SH: Who around you do you admire when it comes to self-discipline in training and preparation?
WR: People like the Australian Laser coach Dr Michael Blackburn and Andrew ‘Dog’ Palfrey. They have such a strong core discipline, with spreadsheets, data and research on everything – it’s super- impressive, seeking that knowledge and validating it. So for me to witness that self-motivation is inspiring. I guess most people could deal with this amount of work and fatigue and training for a week or so – but to train at this level on an ongoing four-year cycle is tough, no question. SH: Rio was your first Olympics, and you had big shoes to fill after Australia’s 470 gold medal wins in Sydney, Beijing and London. How did you mentally prepare for it all? WR: It is strange to look back on even now. I almost feel like I don’t remember a lot of it, being so caught up in the moment and dealing with that pressure. One thing that can happen is you don’t celebrate the small wins along the way, because you are always thinking about the next challenge – this being so much of what we do in an Olympic campaign. So something I feel that has been a big change in this campaign is how I approach the day-to-day small things. When I watched the 470 team win in London 2012 I realised how envious I was and how much I wanted to be there. Back then I was also conscious of the self-awareness of was I capable of winning gold? After a lot of reflection I knew that I both wanted it and was capable of being the very best, so going into Rio I felt I put everything into it that, with a young, ‘do anything’ approach; if someone said that I had to run a marathon I would have run two… maybe not the wisest approach, but the fire was absolutely there. SH: Plenty of pressure simmering around all of this… WR: Sure, the pressure certainly came with it but I don’t think it ever really influenced me on a day-to-day basis, but definitely it didn’t allow me to fully enjoy the process and the moment, which in hindsight is a huge part of going to an Olympics. Going into the Rio regatta I wasn’t in a great place physically, I was a bit too light and so I was probably thinking of that quite a bit – which may have had a flow-on effect at a super-challenging
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