Fast Closing - An update from Rio

Fast Closing - Silverline 49ers

With less than a year until the start of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, it's another reminder that time is ticking away. Sometimes it feels like as you get closer, time just speeds up and you have less and less time to get everything done. At the same time it just makes you really start to feel the buzz around the games and being in Rio with a year to go was just brilliant! Although we just missed out on the selection for the test event, we did make it out to Rio for a couple of weeks' training and another regatta. 


We went to Rio with the rest of the team and got straight stuck into racing. The plan was to maximise time spent racing, learning as much as we could about the different race tracks. With this in mind we spent extra time in the UK preparing the boat with all our Silverline tools and this paid off. We did not have to spend any time working on the boat over the two-week period and TweedleDum was running beautifully. 

Unfortunately, due to not being selected for the test event, this meant that we did not have our coach there to work with us. Although this gave us a great opportunity to self-coach and deal with the 'what if' strategy - when for some unexpected reason such as illness your coach cannot be on the water with you. With that in mind, we chose to make the regatta our focus with the goal of getting on the podium once again.

Along with the four-day regatta we were getting stuck in with plenty of coach run racing. We had some awesome days sailing inside and outside the bay during this time, topped off by winning all three races on our final day's training with most of the test event fleet racing. 

Sat on the plane as I write this, it is a bittersweet feeling. We feel like we are in such a good place to go ahead and race at the test event to further add to our tally of five regattas in Rio with four medals. But due to us missing out on qualifying, we are heading home after racing well, going fast and with the best British track record in Rio. Alas, this is the way the system works and we need to do our best to ensure that next summer we are in Rio competing in Team GB for that gold medal we so desperately desire. 

For now we have some downtime before we head back out to Rio in three weeks to get some more training time while the conditions are similar to Games time.

Dylan & Alan