News Around the World
Carrying a lot of metal… Mat Belcher and Malcolm Page (AUS) on the way to Men’s 470 gold at London 2012. With five Olympic medals between them, four of them gold, plus 15 world championships, there is no disputing who are the two greatest 470 sailors of all time. All the better then that, while Belcher gave the Australian team continuity in the class over the last three Olympiads, having finished two stints ashore with World Sailing then US Sailing Page, he is going back on the water to coach the new mixed 470 discipline for 2024
coaches. We are already into some programmes to improve how the coaches work with each other, and how they work down into their squads. We often get coaches across the sport who are moving up from being athletes; they know a massive amount on the tech- nical side but the gap can be on the interpersonal side of things. That is often the key area to build up. SH: Is physical distance a problem with this – we are after all in this wide brown land… MB: It can be, yes. But we operate training camps by classes, and so there is plenty of time for people to get together and fine-tune things. This is especially important now after two years mostly sitting in Zoom meetings. SH: The team’s new appointments… from the top, we have High Performance Director Iain Brambell who comes from rowing? MB: Iain was the High Performance Director of Rowing Canada, and a three-time Olympian and Olympic medallist himself, so he knows high-performance sport inside out. He is still processing his visa to come to Australia, but he has previously worked here at the Australian Institute of Sport – around 10 years ago – and so is very familiar with the culture. SH:Ken Lynch is the new National Performance Pathways Manager. MD:Ken comes out of Sports New Zealand and prior to that Ireland. Lots of experience across lots of sports and systems – meaning he is well versed to help build an athletes’ pipeline towards 2032. SH: How quickly do you have to act to secure the good people? MB: It’s certainly been a number of conversations and a lot of networking to find out who is available, to then match that with the skillsets we are looking for. The process took around six months to complete. Obviously these people need to be interested – and keen to move out here to Australia! So this is not a simple decision. But I can tell you that the whole process started well before Tokyo. SH: And we come to Arthur Brett – who you know pretty well! MB: I do, as he coached both me and Tom Slingsby way back in 2004, then went with Tom to Beijing. After that 2008 Olympics, unfortunately Arthur kind of drifted away from the Australian team for a while, but now we have him back which is really exciting as there is a lot of experience there in putting things together. He will
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certainly need those skills in the new Olympic IQFoil Class. Right now he is busy diving into that, learning the nuances of the foiling! SH: How? MB: Clearly with such a new class he will need great affinity with the athletes in terms of what they feel and sense. But we already have some solid in-house foiling experience in the Nacra sailors and coaches, who are already aware of the special importance of specific things like foil surfaces and finishes in this class. SH: And we move to Carolijn Brouwer and Ben Walkemeyer as they are sharing the job 50-50 coaching the Laser Radial (or ILCA 6). MB: The conversation started with trying to get Carolijn full-time. She is of course married to Darren Bundock, who is coaching the Nacra 17s. As they are parents with a young child, we discussed flexible employment arrangements but within the performance targets we have set out. I have known Carolijn for close on 25 years, and so I know she is a quality person with fantastic skills across many Olympic classes, plus excellent people management and communication skills from her round-the-world campaigns. So we have her, plus Ben Walkemeyer who has been working with the younger Laser and Radial sailors for a few years… so a fresh young talent working alongside Carolijn. SH: In the 49erFX we now have Victor Paya. MB:He is an interesting guy from Spain, our second Spanish coach besides Rafa [Trujillo], who was involved in the recruitment process. Victor has great experience coaching the Spanish 49ers plus Nacras recently as well, and so again he has those cross-class skills that we are steadily building up. SH: And this brings us to Rafa himself – an extraordinary human being, full of energy, wisdom and fun, and a fantastic person to have in any team. MB:Rafa! He just brings out the reality, the humour and the fun that helps set a really good culture for the team. With the Finn no longer in the Olympics we were obviously looking for a spot for him. He initially put his hand up for the FX49er, but with Victor coming in from Spain we had that covered; so the Laser was missing a coach and with his experience Rafa is in a great position to carry on that legacy. SH: Another new class is the Mixed 470 and you have Malcolm
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