Mushrooms and banana skins: day two for the Brits
by Gael Pawson, Creating Waves 31 Jul 2012 09:00 BST
30 July 2012
49er race 1 on day two of the London 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition © Richard Langdon / Ocean Images
Being in Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy for he Games is slightly surreal. First we can't park (well – you can, but it'll cost you over £500!). Then you have to go through security – manned by the armed forces, who are very pleasant, but insist you can't take a bottle of water through. Then you are confined to the press centre, you need to be escorted down to the media boats, and any access to the dinghy park is strictly policed.
The mixed media zone, which is the only official place the press are allowed in the dinghy park here, is rather like a zoo... behind a fence on one side, the journalists, on the other the athletes, most of them accompanied by their ‘keepers' (their team's 'media person'). If you're lucky you get to ask a question, the poor sailors have a clutch of microphones thrust in their direction and are asked the same questions they just talked to the cameras about... until that is the sailing press get stuck in. Then you really get some colour – more humour comes out, especially when the sailors are more familiar with their audience – it must seem as strange to them to have all this fuss, all these restricted zones, when usually we're all wandering around the dinghy park together.
My top today was Stevie Morrison. Poor Stevie, and crew Ben Rhodes, had a pretty bad day. Two 12ths didn't even give much room for optimism, but Stevie's humour took over. 'It's like Super Mario Kart, sometimes you get a banana skin, sometimes a mushroom. Today we got more bananas than mushrooms!' He said he'd quite like to go back and do it all again... still the 49ers have more races than the other fleets, and there are some fruity conditions ahead this week so there's plenty of racing to go.
Ben Ainslie also had a testing day. While many of the Finns were towed in by their coach boats, Ben chose to sail in... I think I would too. By the time he reached the media zoo he was perhaps calmer than he'd been at the end of racing, but still obviously annoyed with himself. 'You don't turn into a bad sailor overnight, I just had a bad day.' Yes Ben, you got banana skins, so too did Goody, who walked straight past the gathered press. Not happy, neither would I be to have to face a heap of questions when I've had a day on the water that I just want to forget about!
Still there were some mushrooms for the Brits today, most of all in the Stars... they ended the day on top... somewhere I'm sure Ben will be by the end of this competition. An angry Ben is a fearsome beast, and that beast has now been unleashed!
www.YachtsandYachting.com/London2012
Gael Pawson has been editor of the UK's top performance magazine,
Yachts and Yachting, for over 10 years and runs
Creating Waves, which supplies editorial content for a range of publications. A keen and experienced sailor in her own right – having learnt to sail at the age of five - small, fast boats are her first love, but she has sailed everything from America’s Cup yachts to foiling Moths. She has been involved in covering the UK's amazing Olympic sailing success story since the 2000 Sydney Games.