2008 Olympics Updates

Whoever invented four o’clock in the morning is a chump.

That’s what I’m thinking as the stupid, gnat-like shrill of my mobile phone alarm goes and I haul myself out of bed.

I’m in Cowes to compete in the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race on a boat skippered by Olympic Laser sailor Paul Goodison.

Paul, who flew in from training in China the day before, came an agonising fourth in Athens and nearly quit the sport as a result, but is back and highly fancied to land gold in Beijing.

And I’ve blagged a spot in his crew to study an Olympian in action just six weeks before he begins the final phase in his quest to accomplish a lifelong dream.

The annual 55-mile race around the Isle of Wight has attracted a record 1,875 boats and 13,000 sailors, including Formula One star Lewis Hamilton sailing with double Olympic gold medallist Ben Ainslie.

The rest of our 17-strong crew are Volvo keelboat sailing squad members, along with assorted other media types and Sheffield United manager Kevin Blackwell (see pic below). Paul is a Sheffield native and a massive Blades fan.

We slip the dock at 0500 and join the throng of boats milling about in the Solent. Hoisting our sails we glide past the circling Open 60 Hugo Boss, with Ainslie at the helm. We scan the decks for Hamilton but then someone spots him on a launch behind it, waiting to transfer. “He’s taking a photo of us, what a legend,” laughs one of our crew.

It turns out Hugo Boss collides with another boat – Atomic – in the pre-start manoeuvring, breaking its mast and snapping their own bowsprit. “That’s Lewis Hamilton for you,” is the standard gag doing the rounds afterwards in reference to his recent shunts on the track.

The starting gun fires at 0600 – the early hour is to make use of the tide – and we hare off up the Solent towards the Needles under leaden skies.

Paul immediately displays his credentials, keeping a cool head in the initial melee and bellowing to our competitors to give way if we have priority.

Kevin and I volunteer for the first grinding shift, which means for large chunks of the beat up to the Needles we have our heads down pumping the big coffee-grinder winches that pull in the sails.

There’s lots of nautical chat zipping about between the crew, such as “If you want to go for the two, I’m in the port groove” and talk of “snatchblocks” (no, me neither).

We round the Needles just after 0730 and hoist the spinnaker to sail downwind around the back of the island. The increased power in the sails gives Paul a real workout on the wheel as the boat is knocked onto its side.

On one of several such “broaches” Kevin and I are pinned in an embrace against the wire guard rail.

Kevin, just back from a scouting trip to Brazil, has never sailed before but seems to be enjoying it nonetheless.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity, to be fair,” he says. I love the “To be fair” bit. Classic footballing patois in among the sailing spiel.

We broach again, this time ripping the spinnaker, and Paul yanks the wheel left and right to get the rudder to grip in the water. He looks like a man in control but he does admit later “I was hanging on a bit there, just hoping we’d come up”.

During a lull Paul reveals he has never sailed a TP52 before but says the principles are the same as for his one-man Laser dinghy.

“The bigger the boat, the less important the driver is and the more important a good crew is,” he says.

Later, we share the rear toilet (over the stern), and I find myself in the privileged position of having taken a pee with an Olympian and cuddled a top football manager, all before nine o’clock.

When water is passed around, Kevin says he is surprised that the crew share bottles. He tells his players never to put a bottle to their lips, just to spray in the water to prevent germs from being passed. Paul admits he’s probably right but goes on to reveal that in Qingdao, the Olympic sailing venue, they use alcohol-based gels to wash their hands before eating. “In China it’s really easy to get ill so we have to be really anal about it,” he says.

For the Games they will have their own chef but in the training camps they’ve cooked for themselves or run the gauntlet of the local eateries.

“We’ve got to be super-careful what we eat out there. There’s a couple of restaurants we feel pretty safe with but you basically choose from a picture and roll the dice,” he says.

We reach St Catherine’s Point off the southern tip of the island at 0915. The sun comes out and it’s glorious. We pick up one particularly large swell and all cheer as the speedo on the mast ticks over 22 knots. “We’re smoking,” cries Paul.

After rounding the Bembridge Ledge buoy, snacks are passed around. “Not for me thanks,” says Paul. Aha, I think, he’s dieting, trying to shift weight for the light wind conditions in Qingdao. Great control from the Olympian there.

But no. He tells me later, over a pint in fact, that he’s already down to his fighting weight of 74kgs and is back to normal eating, though he has to weigh himself naked every morning to monitor it. At the Games, it gets serious again with the team nutritionalist weighing out specific amounts of porridge for each sailor every morning.

We tack back up the Solent and finish at 1111 BST, 20th over the line and fifth in our class.

“I didn’t appreciate the physicality of sailing before,” says Kevin. “The team work is massively impressive.”

In true sailing tradition we hit the bar. Paul tells me about the recent conditions in Qingdao, which have seen fog so thick that they’ve been unable to see the marks on the race course, even by GPS, and of the green fields of algae which are swamping the sea and stopping boats in their tracks.

“Every day 300-400 local boats go out to try to clear the stuff up,” he says.

I ask Paul whether the imminence of the Games and the pinnacle of four years’ effort has sunk in yet.

“It’s always at the back of my mind but the only time I really think about it is for motivation,” he says. “When I get out of bed feeling knackered and the last thing I want to do is get on my bike, I think of the Games and it’s easy. I have to tell myself ‘you’re not doing it for fun, you’re doing it because you need to, so get on your bike and stop being a lazy so-and-so’.

“The thing I try to think is, ‘what am I going to do today to help get what I want which is a gold medal?’”

With that, we do cheers, lean back and savour the thought.

Now, if I can just push on through until 0400…

You don’t need me to tell you how much dedication and effort it takes to become an Olympic athlete, never mind an Olympic champion.

And if you think that competing in one sport at the Olympics is hard enough, consider those that compete in several events within a sport, or in the decathlon or modern pentathlon.

It is rare though, in these professional days, to find competitors who change sports between Games and still reach the qualifying standard, but one American is bucking the trend at the Beijing Olympics.

Those of you with a decent memory for Olympic swimmers may recall Sheila Taormina. She won gold 12 years ago in Atlanta in the women’s 4×800m relay race (pictured above left).

Four years later, she added cycling and running to her portfolio and resurfaced as a triathlete at the Sydney Games, finishing sixth. A 23rd-place finish in the Athens triathlon followed before Taormina decided to change track again.

She dropped the cycling and began training in epee fencing, shooting and show jumping in her quest to qualify for the American modern pentathlon team.

And early in June, the 39-year-old achieved her goal and in doing so, became the first American to qualify for the Olympics in three different sports.

What makes her feat all the more remarkable is that four years ago, Taormina had not picked up a pistol, an epee or ridden anything larger than a pony.

She says she will be trying for a podium finish, but the main aim is to enjoy herself.

Of course the women’s modern pentathlon is one Olympic sport Britain has excelled in and Katy Livingston and Heather Fell are among the leading medal contenders.

What do you make of Taormina’s feat and how do you see the modern pentathlon panning out in Beijing?

The next time you are out playing football, stand on the goalline, look up at the crossbar and imagine trying to jump over it.

The crossbar is eight feet (or 2.44m if you prefer) off the ground and only one man in the history of the high jump has cleared that height.

Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor achieved the feat in July 1993, with half an inch to spare, to set a new world record of 2.45m that is yet to be bettered.

Sotomayor cleared the height using the now universally recognised flop tecnhique where a jumper attempts to clear the bar head first.

America’s Dick Fosbury is credited with introducing the flop to the world 40 years ago at the 1968 Mexico Olympics when he broke the Games record to win the gold.

Up until then to that point, the scissors, eastern cut-off, western roll and straddle were the techniques used by elite jumpers, and Fosbury’s flop enthralled spectators around the world.

But there are two other athletes with strong claims to have invented the technique which only became viable with the introduction of a cushioned landing mattress.

Canada’s Debbie Brill came up with the her own reverse jumping style called the “Brill Bend” in the mid 1960s, but it is generally accepted this was after Fosbury.

And a grainy black and white photo, uncovered by sportswriter Rial Cummings, showed Bruce Quande going head-first at a meet in 1963, about the time Fosbury was doing the same.

Fosbury was the one who made the impression on the world stage though and will therefore be forever linked to the flop – and I guess the alliterative title of Fosbury flop helps.

He never managed to break the world record with his revolutionary style though – his compatriot Dwight Stones was the first “flop” jumper to achieve that, in 1973.

In fact, Fosbury’s Olympic record clearance of 2.24m in 1968, only matched the world record set by Soviet jumper Valeriy Brumel in 1961.

Brumel used the straddle technique and improved his world best to 2.28m in 1963.

Sotomayor, whose career was later blighted by doping scandals, lifted the world record to 2.45m 15 years ago and nobody else has come close to beating it.

How much longer will it stand?

In Olympic terms, Britain has ruled the waves at the last two Games.

In Athens, Team GB won two gold medals, one silver and two bronzes to top the sailing medal table for the second successive Games after taking three golds and two silvers in Sydney in 2000.

And Britain’s sailors are expected to be among the medals again in Beijing.

Ben Ainslie is looking to win gold at a third successive Olympics after winning the laser class in 2000 and finn in 2004.

The 31-year-old is well-placed having won five finn world titles and the last two test events in Qingdao, where the Olympic regatta will be held.

If Ainslie takes gold, he will have matched Valentyn Mankin’s feat of winning three gold medals.

However, Soviet Mankin is the only sailor to succeed in three different classes, winning the finn at the 1968 Mexico Games, the tempest in Munich in 1972 and – at the age of 41 – the star class in 1980 in Moscow.

Like Ainslie, Mankin also has a silver medal to his name, from the tempest class at the 1976 Montreal Games.

Gold for Ainslie would also keep him on track to emulate the achievements of Paul Elvstrøm.

The Danish sailor is the only man to win four consecutive sailing golds – the firefly class in 1948 and three finn titles in 1952, 56 and 60.

Team GB has set a target of four medals from its 18 sailors, racing in 11 classes, at the regatta in Qingdao. Do you think they will do it?

To suggest British cycling is on a roll right now is a bit like saying newspaper picture editors were disappointed when Ana Ivanovic followed Maria Sharapova out of Wimbledon on Friday. They’ve both got such lovely backhands.

Dominant British performances at the last two World Track Cycling Championships have been punctuated with regular wins on the road for the likes of Mark Cavendish and Nicole Cooke, medals galore at the recent World Mountain Bike Championships and BMX brilliance from Shanaze Reade.

Underpinning that you’ve got a development programme that is churning out talent so fast British Cycling’s performance boss Dave Brailsford has brought forward his plan to establish a national team capable of winning the Tour de France by a couple of years.

The shaven-headed biking mastermind had initially thought it would be 2012 before a British men’s pro team would be ready to join the peloton in cycling’s most famous event, but when you’re as hot as Brailsford is why wait?

And with proven riders like Cavendish, David Millar, Geraint Thomas and Bradley Wiggins on the road already and burgeoning talents like Jonny Bellis and Ben Swift coming up fast, who can blame him? As schemes for global hegemony go, this is right up there with anything Dr Evil had in mind.

But before all that, Brailsford and co will want to make good on the golden promises people have been making for them at this summer’s Olympics.

When a team wins eight of the 10 Olympic disciplines at a world championships less than five months before a Games, expectations are going to get a little fevered. It’s inevitable.

Actually matching those expectations, however, is not inevitable. And Brailsford and his coaches were quick to remind everybody that winning in Manchester in March is not the same as winning in Beijing in August.

Elite sport is all about tiny margins and Brailsford was modest enough to admit those tiny margins went Britain’s way at the Worlds. He also acknowledged the home velodrome factor.

But you don’t get to be number one in the world if you’re not just a little bit confident in your abilities, and from the boss to the team’s least experienced rider to the masseur, these guys know they’re good and they know they’re worth more than the “three or four gold medals” they’re willing to talk about publically.

There could, however, be one problem, the Union Cycliste Internationale.

The UCI, you see, is cycling’s governing body, moral guardian and keeper of the flame. The Swiss-based organisation prides itself on its vigilant application of the sport’s rules – rules it makes and interprets.

Now, one (and it is only one) small part of British Cycling’s recent success has been its willingness to think outside the box, look far and wide for tiny technical improvements and generally push the UCI’s lawmakers a little harder and more frequently than they have traditionally enjoyed being pushed.

So it was with this in mind that we asked the UCI for its views on the nips and tucks British Cycling (and the chasing pack) will be showcasing in China.

This is what Jean Wauthier, the UCI’s technical advisor, had to say:

“Most of the national federations devote a specific budget to prepare for the Olympic Games and, of course, a new high-tech bike is often a must for these teams.

“Personally, from a technical point of view, I do not understand why but it is often for a reason contrary to the spirit of the sport.

“We receive a lot of technical proposals during the pre-Olympic period. But there is only one set of UCI technical regulations and while there are generally no problems, a few teams like to be a bit cunning.

“In the end, it will be the job of our panel of commissaires to check all the materials used in Beijing meet our rules. We know where it will be useful to look.

“Our approach to technology is clear: it is subordinate to the sport, not the other way around.”

Hmmm…I hope British Cycling’s tinkerer-in-chief and former Olympic track champion Chris Boardman has consulted his UCI regs recently. After all, those blazer-clad officials and their protractors have got previous with British cyclists, as Boardman should know.

His great rival Graeme Obree’s battles with UCI officialdom are the stuff of cycling legend. And anybody who has read Michael Hutchinson’s account of his attempt at the hour record will know the governing body can still take delight in Luddite pedantry.

So no need to panic just yet but I’ll be keeping a close eye on those commissaires come competition time. There is genuine potential for pantomime villainy there.