Vita and Ryan's 470 Campaign - May Update
22nd May 2021 - from Vita and Ryan
Cecil Wright & Partners are delighted to sponsor Vita's campaign to make the 2024 Olympic Games.
A medal at last!
The hard work has paid off with a big achievement!! Claiming the bronze medal at the European Championships proves we are at the top of the Mixed fleet and are capable of fighting for that gold! We are SO HAPPY we secured a medal position at this event after the disappointment at Worlds; it has re-installed our confidence in ourselves and we can’t wait to keep climbing up the world ladder!
We are very proud to be making visible and significant improvements every time we race. Pre-europeans we worked hard to build back up our starting confidence and we (on the whole) executed good starts throughout the event. This is what a campaign is all about; making mistakes, taking a step back and reviewing, then making progress so it doesn’t happen again!
P.S: If you were wondering about the UFD we picked up on day 4: we started 20 seconds early because my watch was wrong! I can’t believe we made such a silly mistake at such a critical time - this has never happened before!
Moreover, this was the hardest event the Mixed fleet has seen so far. With 34 boats (14 more than at Worlds) and some fierce new teams, the fight was tougher than ever! Now we have marked our stamp on the Mixed fleet, they better watch out because we’re gonna keep going 👆 !
Similarly to the Worlds, the Europeans was all about consistency as everyone ended up carrying some big results. Even though we never had a stellar day, we were consistently popping in the top 10s and limited our heavy results.
In terms of conditions, this event was predominantly on-shore but light winds, which meant a more stable shift range but also a messy sea state. This made pumping, both upwind and downwind, very tricky as the waves were all over the place! As this was the opposite condition to most of the Worlds, it was a totally different regatta to sail, and a lot of the fleet struggled to find their way in this. Our upwind tactics were strong and consistent in this condition and we paid attention to shift patterns and clouds. Sniffing out the shifts early on in the beat was key to a decent windward mark position.
Hopefully the media and live-streaming was entertaining and I hope we kept you all on the edge of your seats in the medal race livestream!! (Hehe that was a close one!)
It is really good to be home for some time off, thinking about things other than sailing for a bit! Although, Ryan is being put to work at his Army training camp! Meanwhile Vita is recouping on the farm, building back up fitness (mainly in the form of kitesurfing 😜 ), coaching to restock the bank account after the events, and re-rigging our training boat ready to hit the water for a solid block of training camps in June. It’s back to Weymouth for a while! There are many things we have picked up on from the Europeans that we are excited to go and work on with our coach and squad here in the UK for the months ahead.
We have an exciting opportunity to go to Marseille for a training camp this July. It is at the same time as the Junior Europeans so we are discussing at the moment which option is going to be more beneficial to our sailing. There are obvious benefits to both; Marseille is the 2024 Olympic venue so any time we can get there is building our knowledge. There is also a test event there next year, where our performance will be crucial for the Olympics selection. However the Junior europeans provides more racing, and with every race we improve. So many exciting things ahead of us!
Upcoming events … (at current)
• Junior Worlds - San Remo, Italy, 11-18 July
• Junior Europeans - Formia, Italy, 24-31 July or Marseille training camp
• Princess Sophia - Palma, Spain, 2-9 October
It's got some fresh pics! Check it out and let us know what you think!
We are immensely grateful to everyone who has been supporting us, we have had many encouraging messages pre-europeans which gave us a confidence boost going into the event!
Cecil-Wright have created a platform for us to perform off, without the new boat we certainly wouldn’t be one of the fastest boat in the fleet!
As always, we would be so grateful if anyone has contacts in any of these venues or knows of anywhere we can stay. This has greatly helped us in the past.
As always, we would be so grateful if anyone has contacts in any of these venues or knows of anywhere we can stay (the Vilamoura accommodation bill is racking up!). This has greatly helped us in the past.
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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