I started 2024 in Adelaide preparing for our National Championships which was the lead in for the World Championships later that month. It was a decent block of training, and I entered the end of January ready to compete at the Worlds. Going into the final day of fleet racing, I was positioned just shy off the Top 10 with a 3-day race providing lots of opportunities to get into the medal race the following day. We had 18-25 knots, big waves and lots of seaweed which made the downwind runs interesting. I didn’t execute a good enough day to jump up the scoreboard so missed out on the medal race. This year – the introduction of the medal race was quite new to the ILCA World Championships format. The top 10 go into the medal race, and the rest of the fleet do a “losers race” where you battle for the remaining positions. To most countries, the “losers race” is quite important to determine Olympic selection and country spots for the Games. For other countries, an athlete’s funding is based on their World’s performance, so this final race is still super important. We got away – did an upwind, a reach and a downwind and I was in the Top 5, which would’ve put me around 13th overall. However, the race committee eventually cancelled the race, and we had to start again.
With the time limit for the day nearing, countries who were happy with their current position were trying to push the line to have as many general recalls as possible, so we wouldn’t have a final race. This actually worked and we ran out of time and couldn’t sail the final race. We sailed into shore in a nice 15 knot building sea breeze. I finished the Worlds in 22nd.
In April, we had the Palma World Cup. I was there 3 weeks prior training and competing in an organised coaches’ regatta. Palma World Cup is unique as it has 2 days of qualifying, 3 days of finals and the last day for a medal race. I unfortunately got BFD on Day 1 – which put me on the back foot for the event and out of contention for the rest of the week.
A few weeks later we had the French Olympic Week. It was an invite only event, where only a few from each country could compete. This meant we had one fleet, representing a similar field they will have at the Olympic Games. It was a more competitive week for me, with a few small errors placing me in 18th place overall.
In May, I spent time in Perth training and fixing some starting issues I had in the last month competing overseas. In June, I travelled to Marseille to train with the squad in Matt’s lead up to the Games. We had a coaches’ regatta with all the main competitors going to the upcoming Games and I finished 10th. From Marseille, we packed our trailer up and drove to Kiel, Germany where we had our last European event for the year.
The last time I was in Kiel, I won the Radial Worlds in 2018, so I was happy to be back. Going into the final fleet racing day, we had three races scheduled and I was sitting in the Top 5. I previously had a DSQ from my second yellow flag, so there wasn’t any room for mistakes. I had a solid day, managed risk and started well and finished the day in 2nd overall, 14 points behind first. I was stoked to have that type of day but knew that with the points situation I was the biggest threat to the leader. The medal race was tricky, I started well but lost control early to the guy leading the event and that was it. I finished 5th overall but was still a solid event and stoked to be back fighting for regatta wins again. After Kiel, I travelled back down to Marseille to have our final camp of the season before Matt went to the Games. It was a solid two weeks along with a coaches’ regatta where I finished 7th.
I flew home in July and got ready to watch all the sailing on TV like most of us back in Australia. I had two weeks off then got back into training to get ready for the upcoming season.
As of a few days ago, I just finished Sail Melbourne and I’m now getting ready for Sail Brisbane and the National Championships at the end of this month. At Sail Melbourne, I finished the regatta 2nd overall, with a protest hearing on the last day of racing giving me a DSQ in the last race, which dropped me from 1st to 2nd overall. These local events are great training for our overseas competitions, so to have a match race scenario and protest hearing to decide the outcome of the event was great. I’m super pumped for the rest of the summer and hope to have more of these situations to keep building experience into my campaign next year!