News Around the World
London 2012 track cycling bronze medallist Simon van Velthooven is now better known as the guy with his head jammed on the deck at the front of the Team New Zealand peloton. With cyclors out for the next Cup Van Velthooven is hedging his bets with workouts on one of the team’s grinding ergs; the America’s Cup winner is currently also spending time getting a handle on racing sailing boats…
will announce some inspiring new events that will motivate people to continue racing and investing in the Class40.’ The inspiring event could be the Class40 round-the-world race
which a growing number of competitors are asking for. The question is finding a format – solo/two-handed, stopping/non-stop and so on – which suits the maximum number of sailors. Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND Like so many good stories, it turns out the one about Olympic cyclist Simon Van Velthooven was slightly exaggerated. The story is that on the triumphant flight back to New Zealand from Bermuda, talk turned to immediate plans for the future. According to legend, Van Velthooven confided to his seat mate that, having been part of the sailing crew that had just won the America’s Cup, he was now going to learn to sail. ‘It was really more that I wanted to learn to race,’ says Simon.
‘I had actually done a bit of recreational sailing in the past, but I wanted to learn about the sport from the grass roots up, things like positional sailing and all the basics.’ In a sense, he is intent on serving his apprenticeship after gaining the sailing equivalent of a doctorate with an America’s Cup victory on his CV. As is now widely known, Van Velthooven, who won a bronze medal
on the cycle track at the London Olympics, was a key figure behind the cycling systems adopted onboard the Emirates Team New Zealand AC50 catamaran. Initially brought into the team to test the validity of the concept, he went on to play a role in designing the system, training sailors to be cycling power-houses in their own right, and ended up on the boat in the number one grinding position, churning out leg power to pressure the hydraulic systems. ‘It was always the idea that my role would be temporary,’ he
says. Then comes the masterful understatement: ‘But you are operating in a bubble and it gets to a point where you find you are quite invested in the whole thing…’ After the Cup victory, when he articulated that intention to up his yacht racing skills, the future was a fairly blank slate. The possibility
20 SEAHORSE
still existed that cycle grinding might continue to be part of the ETNZ Cup defence. While the AC rule for 2021 is yet to be released, the jungle drums indicate that cyclors will not be part of it. That has not deterred Simon from his sailing goals and he is now
working hard to reshape his physique for conventional pedestal grinding. He is also out there on the water at every opportunity racing monohulls at club level to learn the basics and improve those skills. ‘I came into yacht racing at the top end of the sport with the America’s Cup and in some ways it was not that different from top- end cycle racing, certainly in terms of speed and effort,’ says Simon. ‘Sailing is an awesome sport. It was quite something being on
those catamarans and flying around the course at 45kt. That is a cool day job to have, so I definitely wanted to get back into it again but I felt I wanted to learn more about the racing stuff.’ When we spoke he had just competed in Bay of Islands Week
on the TP52 Kia Kaha. In Auckland he races TP52s and in the Young 88 fleet, a famous breeding ground for competitive keelboat sailors. ‘It is just about getting on the water, doing the best I can and asking lots of questions. I am learning how different boats work. I am not going to get on the helm any time soon but I am doing whatever I can to learn the sport.’ While he does not have any contractual arrangement with ETNZ
at this stage, he goes to the Auckland base three or four times a week to spend sessions on the grinding pedestal. ‘They definitely haven’t locked me out of the base!’ he says. ‘I go and check in with what the designers are working on and the other guys – then I hit the pedestal to make sure I am in good upper body shape for when the time comes.’ His pedestal sessions are also mixed in with three or four gym
sessions a week. This radical reshaping of bodies for different athletic functions is no longer unusual at the elite level. When rowing gold medallist Rob Waddell came into the America’s Cup as a grinder for the 2003 Kiwi defence, his physical transformation from lower body to upper body strength was astonishing. Then he switched it all back again to return to rowing. Kiwi Olympic medallist Joe Sullivan made a similar switch from
w
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