Puppies can only grow so fast

by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt
If dogs age in seven year increments (aka, dog years), aspiring Olympic sailors age in a similar measure, which translated means a year to go before the Tokyo 2020 Games tends to be a short time to grow from a puppy to the head of the pack.

With the close of the Ready Steady Tokyo Olympic Test Event for Sailing, and no medals for North America let alone only three events with top 10 finishes, this doesn’t mean doom and gloom for the 2020 Olympics, but it does signal much work remains.

The good news is the Sailing Venue of Enoshima is no walk in the park. As seen in the Finn event during the test event, the 10 races had eight race winners and over half the sailors had results ranging from top five to bottom five. Consistency was elusive.

During the event, sailors had the full range of conditions from the tail end of a typhoon to extreme heat to light winds, onshore, offshore, shifty, stable, and both flat seas and massive waves. The sailors were challenged to the max, so skill must be augmented with mental strength to endure the rigors of weather and complexity that comes with the Olympic Games.

However, the underlying theme is that success at the Olympic level requires continued commitment, and for North America to climb further up the mountain, the top teams must have Paris 2024 in their plans.

As for now, and with the history of success a year out of the Olympics indicating success at the Games, here are the medalists from the 2019 Test Event:

Men’s One Person Dinghy – Laser
1. SWE, Jesper Stalheim
2. AUS, Tom Burton
3. NOR, Hermann Tomasgaard

Women’s One Person Dinghy – Laser Radial
1. BEL, Emma Plasschaert
2. NED, Marit Bouwmeester
3. HUN, Mária Érdi

Men’s Two Person Dinghy – 470
1. AUS, Mathew Belcher/ William Ryan
2. SWE, Anton Dahlberg/ Fredrik Bergström
3. ESP, Jordi Xammar Hernandez/ Nicolás Rodríguez García-Paz

Women’s Two Person Dinghy – 470
1. FRA, Camille Lecointre/ Aloise Retornaz
2. GBR, Hannah Mills/ Eilidh McIntyre
3. POL, Agnieszka Skrzypulec/ Jolanta Ogar

Men’s Skiff – 49er
1. NZL, Peter Burling/ Blair Tuke
2. GBR, Dylan Fletcher-Scott/ Stuart Bithell
3. POL, Lukasz Przybytek/ Pawel Kolodzinski

Women’s Skiff – 49erFX
1. BRA, Martine Grael/ Kahena Kunze
2. NOR, Helene Næss/ Marie Rønningen
3. GBR, Charlotte Dobson/ Saskia Tidey

Men’s One Person Dinghy Heavy – Finn
1. HUN, Zsombor Berecz
2. NED, Nicholas Heiner
3. GBR, Giles Scott

Men’s Windsurfing – RS:X
1. CHN, Mengfan Gao
2. ITA, Mattia Camboni
3. POL, Piotr Myszka

Women’s Windsurfing – RS:X
1. CHN, Yunxiu Lu
2. FRA, Charline Picon
3. ISR, Katy Spychakov

Mixed Multihull – Nacra 17
1. ITA, Ruggero Tita/ Caterina Marianna Banti
2. GBR, John Gimson/ Anna Burnet
3. GBR, Ben Saxton/ Nicola Boniface

Event details – Entry list – Results – Facebook

Note: Robert Deaves from the Finn Class contributed to this report.