Youth sailing.

Having just returned from a very successful Byte Nationals (viewing not sailing) I was very struck by the amazing performance of some of the teenagers present who were sailing under very trying conditions. The event was won by someone very close to me who is now 29 but the performance of some of the young people was creditable. Ben Ainsley won the Radial World's when he was only 17. What makes some kids so good?

Byte World's at WPNSA by the way in 2018....and the class is looking good! Mk lo

Interesting that in many fitness/power output based sports - cycling, rowing - people don't really hit their peak until their late 20s. 

Originally posted by iiiiticki I would have thought that sailing with it's planing and strategy on top of physical ability and mechanical understanding would take time to learn but this is not always the case. The third place sailor in the Byte Nationals was only 16 and he was a bit light for the conditions on this occasion. We first met him as a 13 year old ex oppie squaddie and he was taking races from more experienced competitors even then. Is there a sailing gene? It is not that Ainsley took a World title at 17, rather that he was sufficiently developed at 13 to start his fight to the top. A friend of mine who is in his late 30's started sailing about three years ago and he was beaten by an 11 year old who was only 8 three years ago! Sailing the smaller C1 rig by the way.

Yep you can apply more time, effort and parents resource in your teens all things being equal, assuming you can keep the beer, kitesurfing and fanny at bay.
Sailing is a skills and experience game, physicality is pretty secondary really but even then a few months of conditioning at any point in one's teens will make a kid far fitter than most adults will ever be.
If you participate in any racing in the popular youth classes ie oppie topper 420 laser 29er etc you will be exposed to higher quality of one design racing than most adults will ever see. This is exacerbated by the fact that excellent coaching is so freely available in the youth classes.
Plus kids are know to fear failure less ie be more progressive in their approach to performance, which underpins higher performance.
So all things being equal, if racing at all regularly in youth classes, I would say that most kids will be the best they ever will be at 17. I would say most kids in that system can cuff their dads / mums at 13.

At the risk of sounding like I'm channelling Eric Twiname (which would actually be a damn good thing) I get the strong feeling that kids tend to do well partly because they play with boats. At the top end of the hottest centreboarder fleets I've sailed in, everyone still played around, whether it was in Lasers with Ben Austin (world Youth champ) when we'd do races with everyone standing on the foredeck, to windsurfers where everyone who was good would just throw the boards around for fun.