The year so far has been dominated by long hours in the 49er with Simon, and the rest of the Skandia Team GBR 49er squad in the UK and recently now in Palma. We have moved our training base out to palma to allow longer training sessions in the warmer climate of the med, Palma is a cheap and easy venue to fly in and out of and the Princess Sofia regatta kick starts the 2009 European circuit in April. With 8 Top professional 49er teams competing for the 1 spot in team GB for the London Olympics, racing well enough to finish in the top 20 by July at the Worlds is my main goal for the year. Achieving top 20 having changed class from the Tornado, last year would be a great result, With the present economic climate we all know that the number of boats funded will need to be slashed post the worlds. So the pressure really is on for ourselves and the other teams to improve as fast as possible.
The main regattas we will be competing at ahead of the worlds are:-
April 5th - 11th, Princess Sofia Regatta, Spain
April 19th - 24th, Hyeres Regatta, France
May 5th - 9th, Expert Garda Regatta, Italy
May 16th - 17th, NR Weymouth, UK
May 27th - 31st, Holland Regatta, NED
June 22nd - 30th, Kiel Week, Germany
July 12th - 19th, 49er World Championships, Italy
We shall of course be training as hard as possible around these competition dates, and hopefully after a good result at the worlds, there will be a bit of rest period in the 49er to refresh, refocus and prepare for the next step in our Olympic campaign. This "down period" will hopefully allow the oppurtunity to race on different boats and classes as i did last summer in the i shares cup on the bt exteme 40.
