Tom Dolan: “Enjoyment the driving force behind performance”
by Tom Dolan Racing 22 Aug 2024 08:35 BST
Having systematically competed at the front of the pack during the pre-season races and even secured a podium place in the Le Havre Allmer Cup back in June, Tom Dolan is now poised to do battle in the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec. Currently in Rouen, like all 35 of his rivals, the skipper of Smurfit Kappa - Kingspan will head to Le Havre on Friday, ready for the start of the first of the event's three legs this Sunday 25 August at 3:00 pm local time.
For his seventh participation in the race, the Irish sailor naturally has high hopes, especially after his fantastic leg victory on home waters last year. However, his main focus is to have fun out on the water as he knows that, ultimately, there is no better driving force than enjoyment in the quest to perform well!
Despite competing in a series of Figaro Bénéteau races at the start of the year and racking up a wealth of experience on other boats, notably including the Niji 40 transatlantic race in Class40, Tom Dolan did manage to take a break in the early part of the summer. As a result, he is very much match-fit as he awaits the start of the 55th edition of the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec in Rouen, Normandy. "I'm ready and raring to go and, with most of her sails brand-new, the boat is too. So much so that the guy preparing my boat went off to the cinema yesterday afternoon!" beams Tom Dolan, clearly eager to get down to action. That's just as well given the scale of the challenge facing all the competitors in the hefty 1,840-mile course to La Turballe via Royan and Gijón. "There are three long legs on the programme, each spanning more than 600 miles. They all promise to be intriguing. The first is set to be complicated as the finishes in Spain are generally rather tricky. You have to manage the risk well. To my mind, it's clearly the leg where you can lose the race straight out of the gate if you don't perform well," announces the skipper of Smurfit Kappa - Kingspan, as he recalls the finish of the Transgascogne 2017. It was a finish in calm conditions, just three miles shy of the leader and a stone's throw from the line, and the deficit transformed into six hours in the end.
Combining enjoyment and action
"The second leg will doubtless be pretty full-on as the passage around Cape Finisterre can be very breezy. If that is the case, the challenge will be to not break anything. The last leg will take us around the north-west tip of Brittany twice over and the Four and the Fromveur passages are always complicated, which means it will likely be a very technical final round," notes the 'Flying Irishman', who's thrilled about the upcoming menu with its lengthy offshore sections. "The fact that there are a lot of oceanic sections, with three passages across the Bay of Biscay in all, really suits me. I'm also quite pleased that there aren't any legs to Ireland this year because, although it worked out very well for me during the last edition, this way there is much less pressure on my shoulders," explains Tom who, after winning a leg last year in Kinsale and then finishing 5th and 7th in the event in 2020 and 2022, naturally ranks among the favourites in this Solitaire du Figaro Paprec 2024. "I haven't set myself a specific goal though. That's the way I operated during the pre-season events and it worked out quite well for me. My main focus will be to combine enjoyment and action. During the Olympic Games, a lot of athletes had that philosophy on repeat. It might sound a bit hackneyed but it really is key," emphasises the sailor, who has fully grasped the fact that having fun doing your sport is bound to equate to greater motivation, focus and investment in the challenge, which in turn enhances performance. "I'm going to take things one leg at a time, control everything I can control and not focus on the result until the end," concludes Tom Dolan.
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