Sailing ready to capitalise on 2012 London success - Sail World

Australia’s recent triple Gold medal success at the London 2012 Olympic Games thrust sailing into the limelight across the country. For the first time our Olympic sailors were on the front page of every newspaper and leading every television and radio news broadcast.

The success of the team isn’t measured in medals alone but how the sport can capitalise on London 2012 and increase participation across the country.

While our sailors were preparing to take on the world’s best on the water, Yachting Australia has been developing a new participation program to assist clubs to increase their membership base and get more people than ever before on the water.

Yachting Australia CEO Phil Jones said that Australia’s sailors did a great job of raising the profile of the sport and now it was up to sailing clubs to react and reap the benefits.

'Australia’s sailors were undoubtedly the success story of the London 2012 Olympic Games,' said Jones. 'The team performed incredibly well, not only topping the sailing medal tally but becoming Australia’s most successful sport in London.

'This has created a great opportunity for sailing in Australia to reach more people than ever before and introduce these people to our great sport,' he said. 'For some time now Yachting Australia has been working on a program to increase participation across the country and is now ready to introduce the Discover Sailing Program to Australian clubs.'

Discover Sailing launched to clubs

In June this year, Yachting Australia’s Sport Development Director Ross Kilborn launched the Discover Sailing Program to club officials through the State and Territory Associations. The State and Territory Associations are tasked with assisting clubs to understand, consider, and adopt the Discover Sailing Program.

'Discover Sailing has been put together following a detailed market research program conducted in 2011, with extensive collaboration from State Associations and Clubs,' said Kilborn. 'Improving the image, information and communication of Clubs was one of the imperatives identified and the Discover Sailing Program and brand aims to do just that.'

'For this coming season the emphasis is on helping clubs implement, and promote, the program,' he said. 'The two immediate targets are engaging members to ‘Invite a friend or family’ to the club, as well as people living in their local area, who have always been interested in sailing but have not tried it. This will be done through local club based marketing'.

The Discover Sailing Program is not a one off, it will be a long term Program to build brand recognition of sailing as a fun, friendly, accessible and affordable sport.

Details of the Discover Program

Yachting Australia launched a new website for those who have not been involved in sailing before, www.discoversailing.org.au. The site incorporates non-technical explanations and several videos about how to get into sailing and what clubs offer.

The Discover Sailing Program is managed by Yachting Australia’s Participation Manager, Dr. Daisy Brooke.

'Discover Sailing is more than a brand, it’s an entire Program that incorporates both changes at clubs and a number of core products and services to be delivered by clubs across Australia,' she said.

These include:

Discover Sailing Days and a National Discover Sailing Day, building on the success of current try, and go, sailing days in various states. Some States are conducting these this year, and all are aiming for a national day in 2013. Clubs can run them as often as they like.

Discover Sailing Experiences – a new product currently being developed to provide a three hour sailing and club experience to newcomers.

Learn to Sail Courses – in dinghies and keelboats. Yachting Australia has undertaken a major facelift for its two introductory learn to sail programs in dinghies and keelboats and rebranded the old Yachting Australia Training Centres as Discover Sailing Centres.

A Crew 'Matching' service – matching aspiring crew via the website with boat owners.

A range of promotional material for use by clubs.

Tackers - a fun based junior program, for 7-12 year olds. It’s been developed to give sailing the 'cool' factor that kids are looking for and to compete with other sports. It’s now being rolled out in all States.

Sailability- providing similar pathways for sailors of all abilities to be included in all club activities.

Sailing Pathways – the backbone of progressing and retaining people in sailing.

Besides the Discover Sailing website, www.discoversailing.org.au, for non-sailors, Yachting Australia has updated its own website, www.yachting.org.au. The Education and Training sections, along with a new Participation area, provide details of the Discover Sailing Program to club officials and people currently involved in sailing.

The website also features an extensive explanation of the Sailing Pathway, which underpins the Discover Sailing Program. Yachting Australia believes that the pathway is as important to success in participation, as the development and high performance pathway has been for gold medals.

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Paralympic Sailing Day 3 round-up - Yachting World

After six races, GBR Helena Lucas leads the way

2.4mR

Two race wins propelled Helena Lucas into gold medal position in the 2.4 Metre one-person keelboat class at the halfway point of the London 2012 Paralympics. She holds a nine-point advantage over nearest rival Heiko Kroger (GER) as her back-to-back race victories, coupled with the fact that the sailors have now completed five races and can eliminate their worst score of the series, saw her manoeuvre into pole position at the head of the fleet with five races to come.

After a two-hour postponement waiting for the breeze to arrive in Portland Harbour, triple World Championship medallist Lucas, who has lived in Portland in preparation for this event, made the most of the light breezes in the harbour today. But she insists she had a valuable lesson in taking nothing for granted reinforced at this summer's Olympics when the Star team of Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson saw a gold medal - and a seven-point lead - disappear in a crushing final race flash.

Lucas said: "I couldn't have asked for more than that today, I'm just really, really pleased. But I'm absolutely not thinking about where that has left me. I've managed to get a nine point lead having done six races so with five races to go it would be quite easy to lose that nine point lead. I'm certainly not getting carried away.

"You look at what happened to Perce and Bart at the Olympics, when they led the whole regatta. Anything can happen. You can easily have a bad day or something goes wrong. It is great to have a bit of a cushion at the moment but I'm fully aware that that can get eroded very quickly."

SKUD18

Alexandra Rickham and Niki Birrell insist consistency will be key as they sit just a point off gold in silver medal position as the event enters the business end.
They picked up a stunning race win and a solid third in the light conditions to put themselves a point behind the Australian leaders, Dan Fitzgibbon and Liesl Tesch, and with a point advantage over the Americans, Jen French and J-P Creignou.

The Brits, who have won the last four World Championships, have prided themselves on their consistency across all conditions in recent years, something that definitely helped today, as light fluky breeze provided the sailors with the double test of keeping the boat going fast while contending with big swings in wind direction.

Rickham said: "Over the last couple of years consistency has been our strength so we like regattas where we get a mix of conditions because where other boats may excel in certain conditions we try to keep it going steadily in all of them. We enjoy a bit of a play in light winds and it served us well today."

Birrell added: "A lot can go right and wrong but it's vital that we stay within a point of the leaders because we don't want to be starting Thursday any more than a point behind, we need to keep it in our own hands until then and if we can do that we will be happy. We have done four years of continuous hard work so we are not going to change anything now. There is a lot of concentration needed but winning is definitely possible and while it is possible I'll still have a smile on my face."

Sonar

The British Sonar team insist it is "Game on!" as they sit just four points outside the medal zone at the halfway point despite a tricky day three on the water. John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas started the day confidently with a solid fourth place but admit they did not meet their own high standards in the second race of today, coming 13th.

With the discard kicking in after the first race of today, the Sonars do not currently count that 13th. With everyone bar the Dutch leaders seemingly struggling for consistency in the opening half of the event, the Brits are certainly not about to start panicking about sitting seventh overall at this stage.

Thomas said: "We are only halfway through the regatta and if you look at the last two day's results they are all over the place with everyone up and down so it's just all about keeping sane, keeping logical and keeping on fighting. Our boat speed is good, we are starting well, we just need a break or two and we will be there."

Robertson added: "It's tough; it's a Paralympic Games so it's not going to be easy. We always try our best but it is hard work and we will keep working hard. The Dutch boat could have two 12ths tomorrow then we could be right back in the mix for gold."

Olympics-Men's sailing Laser Race 9 results - Reuters

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