Vita and Ryan's 470 Campaign - July Update
Cecil Wright & Partners are delighted to sponsor Vita's campaign to make the 2024 Olympic Games.
A mixed bag in sunny San Remo
After an action-packed month of training in Weymouth with the Olympic teams (before they headed off to Tokyo), Etchells racing on the weekends and fitness and boat work in between, we didn’t get the chance to pause before we packed up our kit and drove 16 hours to San Remo for our Junior Worlds.It was a stressful week trying to sort out travel plans and visas (becoming very complex with both Covid and Brexit!); and we didn’t know if we were going for a week or a month!
In the midst of all these shenanigans, we didn’t pause long enough to contemplate how run down we were. With the 470 now gone mixed, Vita needs to be as strong and fit as she possibly can to compete with the male helms so she was putting a lot of energy into strength and conditioning. You need push yourself very hard to reach these fitness goals alongside maintaining sailing skills. There is a fine balance between optimum performance gains and getting
fatigued.
We arrive at the club in San Remo (on Vita’s birthday) after an exhausting journey, but seeing blue water, 30ºC and other boats out gets us excited and the adrenaline kicks in - we feel like were invincible! We go straight into 4 days of training and cycling before racing starts; looking back we definitely overcooked it!
Day 1 of racing: Strong breeze, we are absolutely cruising and feel confident tactically too; straight into a race win 💪 same story for race 2 until the top of the second beat - the main falls down - what just happened?? Out main halyard had snapped. We tried to fix it by capsizing and tying it on (loosing pole in the process) but we had to retire 😭 Frustration and despair.
Third race of the day and we’re steaming along up the first beat at the front of the pack with the main securely fastened at the top of the mast! A big left shift at the top of the beat caught us out, but no major disaster. So day 1 of the regatta went from being a potentially outstanding day to a deeply depressing one, with lots of extra hard work ahead! We come in feeling dispirited, frustrated and tired! Every one packs up and heads off to eat and recover after a long and exhausting days racing; but not us! 3 hours of fixing leaves us with nothing left in our tanks at 9 pm that evening. This put us on the back foot for the rest of the event - we never really fully recovered after that. So we were not only physically but mentally drained after day 1 - not what you want.
Conditions were very up and down - usually no wind in the morning and then coming in in the evening. We spent plenty of hours bobbing around in a postponement waiting for the wind to fill in - on one day it never did so no racing. We often launched for a second time at 4:30 pm to finish at 8. It was hard but essential to get in good recovery time after every day.
Day 3 we got back in the grove and finished the first race of the light wind day in 1st. To be followed by a black flag (along with many other boats). The line was very tricky in the light winds because if you didn’t get a cracking start you were immediately buried and sailing in dirty wind for the rest of the race as it was a very one sided race track. With most of the fleet fighting for the biased pin end and no land transits, it was hard to get right!
Ever since we got back we have been exhausted and have taken a week to recover before heading for racing of a different kind at Cowes Week! It’s been good to switch off the motivation and not push ourselves for a bit. It’s given us a chance to reset, think about what we need to do, organise our campaign going forwards and watch the Olympics!
We have learnt so much about event preparation and our boundaries as athletes, so all in all it was a great learning experience and we can’t wait to get it right next time!
The success at the games last week has left us feeling more excited and motivated than ever to get that gold! As you could see on the faces of the medalists - there is no better feeling!
Upcoming events … (at current)
• Princess Sophia - Palma, Spain, 2-9 October: the first major event post-Olympics, so we’ll get a chance to race against all the new teams!
Our Olympic selection trials process for 2024 will likely begin at the end of next year, so it’s not long before ourselves and our kit need to be in top shape. Our race boat Anzu has done us very proud but after 2 years of sailing her hard she is loosing her stiffness so it’s time to look for a new one. Now the Olympics are over, we are looking to buy a boat and kit off one of the Olympic teams. We are talking to our team and supporters to decide which boat will be best for us and best optimise us to win those trials!
The games boat from the Olympic teams is £13,000, which is almost all of our funding for the year! If anyone could help out, big or small, on this cost I cannot explain how much of a game-changer that would be. To win the trials we need the best boat.
We also have good news! After our bronze medal at the Europeans we have moved up a level on the UK Sport funding ladder. This is encouraging and relieving for us as now the events and expenses are ramping up because we can travel and compete again!
Please pass on the link to anyone you think might be interested, thanks!
We are immensely grateful to everyone who has been supporting us, you support and encouragement means a lot to us and gives the confidence to keep fighting! Not long now until our Olympic trials!
As always, any contribution to travel, accommodation, entry costs (etc) will be massively appreciated and will go along way!
If you want to help us out on our journey to Paris 2024 or want to chat, then please give us a call! Vita – 07586349225 Email – vitaryangbr11@gmail.com
For some gnarly pics and updates on our progress, check out:
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