Growing the Sport: Year One of a Grand Scheme

After 35 years of being hosted further north in Medemblik, this year’s Hempel World Cup Series at the Allianz Regatta took place for the first time in Almere and Lelystad. Closer to the capital of Amsterdam, the Olympic classes competition was part of a brand new event called Dutch Water Week. All around the capital there were plenty of opportunities for first-timers to have a go at sailing, or stand-up paddleboarding along with many other water-based activities.

As to the Hempel World Cup Series regatta itself, this was the second event after the Trofeo Princesa Sofia in Palma, Mallorca, two months earlier. Following the long, enforced break from competition caused by the pandemic, sailors around the world have been eager to hurl themselves back into international competition. Not just to compare themselves on the water, but to rekindle friendships on shore.

More than 400 sailors came to the Netherlands to take part in the new-look Allianz Regatta, with five boat classes based in Almere and four foiling board classes on the beach in Lelystad further to the north.

There was a good turnout of entries from multiple continents, from as far away as New Zealand and Australia along with many Asian countries looking to make their mark on this Olympic cycle. With competitors from Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand and a large contingent from India, there are good signs that Olympic sailing activity continues to grow in the Asian continent beyond the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Early on in the regatta, the Mixed 470 team from India, Uma Chouhan and Ravindra Sharma, wore the red bibs for lying third overall in the competition. Coached by Farokh Tarapore, a veteran of three Olympic Games representing India in the 470, this new team shows early promise of becoming serious contenders in the next few years.

Like the double Olympic gold medallist Malcolm Page coaching his fellow Australians and 2003 world champion Gabrio Zandona coaching the Italian 470 squad, Tarapore is keen to share his experience and help accelerate the learning curve of his young sailors from India. “I’ve had a good career in sailing and so now it’s time to give back to the sport. I’m coaching absolutely free of charge. I firmly believe that if you combine passion with obsession, you get results. And after the Tokyo Olympics, once the 470 was declared as a mixed event, it was very exciting for me to get involved.”

Tarapore is using his young team to try to prove a theory that he came up with four decades ago. “The switch to Mixed 470 is very exciting for me because when I was racing the boat back in 1983 I figured that the best way to sail the 470 is with a zero-weight skipper and a 100kg crew. Now that’s just theory, of course. But this is what got me excited because now the Mixed category makes it possible for this theory to come close to reality. In India we have really tiny girls who are reasonably strong, because they come from villages, they come from places where there’s no water. And we generally lose them [to sailing] because they can’t fit into any other class. But girls like Uma fit the 470 perfectly, and we’ve got taller, heavier guys like Ravindra who’s in the Navy. So they are sailing with a combination of 48kg and 78kg which is almost unique in the 470 world. Most people are challenging us that this will never work because the girl at 48kg won’t have sufficient strength. But I don’t agree. They haven’t seen the concrete blocks and weights she can lift!”

From 48kg skippers in the 470 to the 90kg-plus giants that are beginning to make their mark in the new foiling classes. It’s too early to say exactly what will be the competitive weight range in the Formula Kite and iQFOiL board fleets, but the 112kg Benoit Gomez (FRA) certainly proved hard to beat in the Formula Kite Men. The smiling Frenchman held the yellow bib from the start of the regatta all the way through to crossing the finish line of the final race, launching his board into a skyward loop by way of celebration.

Annelous Lammerts (NED) was similarly dominant in the Formula Kite Women, and winning a gold medal at a World Cup event was a major breakthrough for the Dutch rider who has been working hard to get into a position to challenge for the podium.

It was also a breakthrough moment for Peruvian windsurfer Maria Belen (PER) who beat her iQFOiL training partner Lilian de Geus (NED) by the tightest of tiebreaks. Unfortunately the wind died on the final afternoon of the six-day regatta, meaning we never got to see the thrilling ‘winner-takes-all’ three-board final. For winning the qualifying part of the week, Belen had already secured herself some kind of medal and it would be down to a single race lasting just a few minutes to determine if it would be gold, silver or bronze for Peru. With no final-day racing however, the gold automatically went to Belen.

Similarly for Huig Jan Tak (NED) in the iQFOiL Men’s fleet, the Dutchman really wanted the adrenalin kick of that three-way scrap for the medals. The final day jeopardy formats which have been introduced by the new foiling events are a far cry from the more traditional approach of the boat classes which still contest their regatta through a week of qualifying racing, topped off by a double-points medal race for the top 10.

Asked where Tak stands on the subject of finals formats, the Dutchman replies: “Defining the best athletes is the most important thing. This is why we’re doing what we do. We want to race and we want to win in a fair way. But we can’t forget that we really want to grow our sport and show it off to the public, which makes it a really hard discussion because they want excitement and they want a show.

“I have to say that crossing the finish line in a final where it’s all or nothing and you’ve come through it and won the event – that’s an amazing, amazing feeling. And it’s like really like a big high, where you hit this peak emotion in the moment, instead of a gradual build into happy times during the whole week..”

The 30-plus knot foiling classes are certainly bringing fresh excitement as well as radical new ideas about how to run high-level competition. The Dutch organisers of the Hempel World Cup Series at the Allianz Regatta brought fresh thinking to staging a world-class event, bringing it closer to the city and the people of Almere and Amsterdam. The courses closer to Amsterdam suffered from a significant weed problem which affected the racing on the first day but the Dutch are fast learners and fast innovators.

Former volleyball professional Arno van Geuren heads up the Dutch Watersports Federation and was proud of what had been achieved in year one of a long-term plan for the regatta. “We have the industry and the sense of innovation in the Netherlands to try new ideas,” he said. Two such examples were the use of Smartmarks, self-propelled marks which hold their position to within 40cm accuracy thanks to a combination of GPS location and internal gyroscopic sensors, along with the trial of a new RS Electric Pulse rib.

“We need a lot of volunteers to organise our sport and I think Smartmarks are making it easier to do things with fewer people, And we have the challenge of reducing carbon emissions with all the ribs on the water, and the Pulse electric rib is a move in the right direction,” van Geuren explained.

Van Geuren sees the Olympic sailors as vital ambassadors to help grow the sport by inspiring the next generation. “Having the Olympic competition as part of Dutch Water Week is very important, because these are the heroes of our sport. This year’s event was the start of something big which I hope and expect will become a tradition to last many, many years. We started the idea just a year ago, so I’m really proud of where we’ve reached. We’re here now and we’re learning, we’re improving. We need all the feedback from to make it better next year and to make this regatta one of the best in the world.”

Words by Andy Rice