Rod Davis
Weathering the coronavirus storm
It’s a bad one, and it will be destructive on a lot of fronts. Both in health and financial terms. It’s the first time the whole world has been on the same side in the history of mankind. Trying to separate fact from fiction, or irrespon-
sible speculation that the news and social media like to throw out there, is near impossible. But
from an overall point of view: control what you can control and don’t fret about the things you simply can’t control as they will only stress you out. Do deal with things as they come up, rationally and logically. As a coach, when we make a gameplan we like to look first at
how things will be most likely to play out. Then we look at what could go wrong and make adjustments to our programmes accord- ingly. While that meets the criterion of being proactive, not reactive, it’s also a kind of a dark way to look at it. Still it’s how you become the best you can be given the situation. In this case we are going to have to look into an undefined future
to make the gameplan. That can be fraught with danger! To make predictions, especially ones that are as fluid as this situation is, and as far out as we are, can be tricky and need constant reviewing and updating. What they call ‘the fog of war’ where nothing is crystal clear but decisions still have to be made. But in the interest of positioning ourselves as well as we can
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for the future we are going to have to make some assumptions. Yeah, yeah I know about assumptions. For this they don’t have to be perfect, just need to be close to the mark. Peering into the fog, I see the health side of the coronavirus will
have passed its peak and hopefully the world will be on the good side of the curve by August. That is the good news, if you can see it as good news. The next challenge is the financial side which will take a very long time to get on the recovery side of the curve. All this leads me to conclude our sport of sailing will change,
and change dramatically. Some aspects will take a big hit, like high- profile professional events, but there are excellent opportunities for grass roots sailing. The world will have to hit a ‘reset button’ really hard, and sailboat
racing could well go back in time; travel worldwide will be slow in coming back, thus forcing sailing back to basics and not the spend- ing frenzy of the past few decades. High-profile yachting, the Round the World Race, America’s Cup,
SailGP series, all world championships and superyacht racing could find the next few years… how can I call it? Lean, to say the least? Simple truth is sponsors like Emirates, Oracle, Prada, Rolex or
even individual wealthy owners can’t really put millions of dollars into yacht racing when they are having to show the exit to thousands of employees. And even when an owner can afford to play with their
MAX RANCHI
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