Olympic Learning

We would all say that learning is important, yet often the systems and processes we use prevent us even from transferring knowledge to help us improve performance, whether it be as an athlete, official, organiser or volunteer. When I started learning about the rules governing the sport of sailing in earnest I referred to an annual publication that the very experienced sailing judge, Bryan Willis, produced.

In sailing at top international events an International Jury is normally appointed. This jury, because of the experience and knowledge of its members, is permitted under rules not to have any of their decisions appealed beyond the event and yet the case law element of the rules, the Cases, are produced from interesting and pertinent appeals. Thus the interesting cases heard by an International Jury never get into the case law of the sport.

To solve this block in knowledge development Bryan would compile a summary of all the interesting cases from international juries on which he had severed over the season. Not all judges are as contientious to take on such a time consuming task, including me!

The same 'block' to learning and knowledge transfer can be experienced between the Olympic area and the rest of competition sailing. Here at Weymouth & Portland the organisers have incorporated many innovations in particular to make the event more accessible to spectators, supporters and the developing fan-base. The BBC coverage has been sensational - lead by Richard Simmonds and Leigh MacMillan, though the official Olympic Broadcasting Service less so (I guest they have less sport specific experience than APP Sunset + Vine, who are providing the feed and editing for the BBC coverage). And the Nothe Fort spectator area and beach Live Site have proved a massive success.

Let's hope the learning gained from incorporating these innovations can be captured and taken up by the Rio 2016 organisers.

I hope that the official Knowledge Transfer phase of organising the Games will be sufficiently effective enough to ensure the Olympic sailing regatta at Rio 2016 will be covered as least as well as that of London 2012.

Not originally included in the bid proposal the local organisers convinced of the merits of creating 

Integrating Match Racing

Once Women's Match Racing was confirmed as an Olympic event for the London 2012 Games, ISAF and organisers of the Sailing World Cup competitions have tried hard to integrate this very different form of sailing into the more normal fleet racing programme. A laudable objective helping to make the WMR athletes feel part of the event.

However, anomalies do occur. An interesting example would be the use of Starndard Penalties - an increasingly used innovation where Protest Committees refer to a list of specified rules breaches and associated penalties, some of which can even be imposed on athletes without a hearing by the Race Committee. In itself this is a great scheme as infringements and their associated penalties become standardised and consistency between different decisions and between events increases dramatically, a big improvement for competitors and spectators alike.

Though there are pit-falls; here in Weymouth & Portland there are designated Competition Areas, bounded by lines of buoys. There is a Standard Penalty for straying outside this boundaries, a penalty of 3 points can be imposed by the Race Committee without a hearing. This of course all sounds very reasonable, to a fleet racer .......... if you are a match racer having 3 points deducted is equivalent of being disqualified in three races, rather over the top by anyone's view!

This got me thinking - a dangerous situation I know! What about the difference between the 49er fleets and the others? The former race an Opening Series of 15 races and the latter only 10, thus the 49er athletes race 50% more. So the impact of a 3 point penalty is very different. Indeed an athlete with a high score is impacted less than an athlete with a lower score ........ should we go to penalties based on a percentage of an athletes score? If so which score, the one at the time of the infringement or their final score?


Comments?

A Very Warm West Country Welcome!

Well how a week can fly by! The authorities here in Weymouth & Portland have done an amazing job - a great Park & Ride scheme, lots of cycle storage points, tons of friendly helpers to advise you and give you directions, pop concerts every evening, the Live Site with full Olympic coverage, and of course the Nothe viewing area. It's all fantastic!

Of course it's not the same as China, Qingdao is a city of millions not a British seaside resort but the welcome is just as warm and more personal rather than the almost military precision and impersonal feeling at the 2008 regatta.

 A Life In The Day Of, An Umpire At Skandia Sail For Gold, Olympic Classes Regatta, part of the ISAF Sailing World Cup, 2011

"You must be clear that the clear is clear", and other useful umpiring phrases!  A life in the day of an umpire at Skandia Sail for Gold, by Ewan McEwan

“I want to be the greatest sailor in the world”, of course at the relatively tender age of 11 my ‘world’ was quite a small one - just a few school friends sailing on The Broads in Suffolk for the Easter holidays thanks for the generous commitment of a geography teacher loyal to sailing and keen to introduce his charges to the sport.  Of course it's a much bigger ‘world’ I live in today!  Mind you, I was in good company learning to sail on Barton Broad as apparently Lord Nelson was said to have done and he was quite handy turning boats, or rather ships of war, in order to bear their guns quicker than the enemy – an innovative naval manoeuvre that lead to, arguably, Britain's ‘finest (naval) hour’.  Once I realised the 'world' was a tad bigger than I had originally imagined, and that took a few years, I started umpiring – a variant on the adage ‘those that can’t do, teach’!

It's a long way from Anglesey to Portland, island to island, though to attend the Skandia Sail for Gold to join the umpire team for the Women's Match Race, WMR, event made it a very worthwhile trip.  In total the whole jury was some 25 people strong, 10 of who made up the umpire team, and two of which were British, Sally and me.  Wednesday 8 June started early for me; a mixture of excitement - it's quite a privilege to be included in the umpire team at such a prestigious event in my home country during the build up to the Olympics next year - and a lot of sun shining though the window at 05:30, as it did for six days straight, unheard of.  "It’s not normally like this" is a cry we hear at events all over the world, but honestly Weymouth/Portland is not normally like this its 'normally' covered in horizontal rain and misty fog!  Even the competitors have appreciated the irony renaming Weymouth to "Weybiza" after the rather infamous Balearic Island.

Eventually I gave up fighting wakefulness, showered and dressed ready for another full, and I do mean full, day on the water; the women’s match racing started before all the other classes and finished after all the other classes - no wonder the ISAF's council have voted WMR off the Olympic slate for Rio 2016 (without even giving it the benefit of proving itself actually in an Olympic regatta), it shows up all the other 'part-time’ classes!  So ISAF; which decision was wrong?  Putting WMR into the Olympics or taking it out of the Olympics? Hmmm, a good question to ponder during the winter’s evenings.

Actually the reason we have such long days is that there are 24 teams competing and only 8 boats for them to race in, so the umpires and race committee end up umpiring and running three times as many races as any of the competitors actually compete in.  And what is rather frustrating is that at least a third of those races are a waste of time – if you are interested in the intricacies of match race formats I'll explain another time, suffice to say that the team racing fraternity has got the answer to this and have been using it for around the last 60 years, it's called the 'league' format!

My 'day job' is as a management trainer travelling the world delivering programmes for international and global companies - in all my time I have never paid more than Euro 150 a night for a room; the Rack Rate for the Moonfleet Manor Hotel were a bit more than that - I hope the RYA were getting a good discount!  If you divide the cost by the number of hours we got to spend at the hotel it would work out to be the most expensive hotel in the world, mind you the staff were very friendly and helpful, and I would highly recommend that any family include it in their list of options.  It is located in a truly wonderful area of our country and is perfect for kids to roam the surrounding countryside.

This day's racing was filled with mainly repechage flights; 6 teams, 2 from each of the three initial 'equal ability' Stage 1 groups, qualify directly to the quarter-finals leaving two places up for grabs to the winners of the repechage group, made up from those teams coming 3rd and 4th in each of the three original groups, simples!  If you think this is complicated wait till the Olympic regatta when there will only be 12 teams competing in one single-group round robin over two whole weeks, it could become quite tiresome, but then again maybe it's designed to be; it would endorse ISAF council’s decision as it doesn’t fit the needs of the future tele-visual and spectator friendly requirements!

The fighting in each race was intense and the umpiring had to match that intensity.  I am a particularly practical-minded person - it took me years to work out TSS diagrams much preferring to see situations in the flesh, so to speak – as a result I like to get to the race course early to check the downwind lay-lines and tune-in to the conditions on the way to reporting to the Race Committee on the signal boat down in the starting area, and securing a good supply of coffee for the day.  On this particular day the RC received Umpire 3 (our call-sign for the first rotation) with a more than frosty stare, you could even call it one of Paddington's 'special hard stares': it turned out that our in-RIB conversation on the 20 minute ride out from the marina to the Nothe Fort sailing area had been transmitted on open VHF channel as I had laid the handheld radio on the dash board with the PTT button down-most and our entire conversation (normally subject to the “Heathrow Rule” – what happens on-tour, stays on-tour) ‘dissing’ the rather rudimentary toilet facilities on the committee boat had been heard by dozens of people including the coaches, the competitors, our fellow umpires, and of course the race committee boat's owners, oooops!

I was officially “off” coffee privileges until further notice, only to recover them on the last day after passing over large quantities of fermented grape juice. And my bad luck did not stop there: several of the RIBs, kindly lent by their class coaches, used as umpire boats had external fuel tanks that had spent more time awash in the bottom of the RIB than was good for them or, rather more precisely, good for their engines, and ‘good’ for me!  Halfway though my tour as wing boat (the umpire team rotates around the various roles and this boat provides the reverse angle view information to the umpires particularly during the pre-start period) our engine spluttered to a halt; not to worry, one quick call to Ed Stevens and John Horwell using one of the ‘event phones’ previously used by John Derbyshire – so Ed thought that it was he that was calling and thus a speedy response – and rescue, and repair, was at hand.  Apparently we were not the first to have had this problem and it is one of the difficulties with large sailing event management where the provenance of the boats borrowed is unclear.

With a clean tank of go-go juice we resumed our duties only to be told that the “powers that be” had reallocated the 49er fleet to the Nothe Fort sailing area, or ‘circle’ as has become the common parlance, meaning we had to move the WMR course into the Portland Harbour.  With 27 knots blowing from just west of south-west, the Northern harbour entrance was mayhem and the new course area not much better with breaking crests and a short sharp sea.  The PRO did a couple of flights to show ‘willing’ and then made a very sensible decision to head for the marina.  The umpire team were kept ‘on-hold’ for a while and then ‘released’ at 18:00 – the event bosun having gone home at 17:30, he obviously knew what was happening earlier than we did - surprising how long it takes to communicate a decision.

However, that was not the end of the day for the umpires, once released from umpiring duties, they then volunteer their service to the jury chair to help with any backlog of hearings.  I got roped into three, though all very straight forward cases; a request for a redress claim withdrawal – all protest withdrawals have to be reviewed by the jury to prevent any coercion by another party or possible manipulation of the scores, which has happened in the past – and two protests from the Race Committee for breaches of the Tally system, a primary safety system using in the RS:X classes – apparently this system is not used at other ISAF SWC events, according to the competitors, and they had fallen foul by not following the requirements, and were subsequently penalised by a proportion of their scores in the appropriate races.

So, off to the pub for a quick bite with the rest of the gang, then to a well earned and needed shower, and a night cap discussing the merits of ……, well the night cap was so good I can’t remember!

Oh, and the title; imagine two boats overlapped on starboard broad-reaching down to the port lay line for the leeward mark, the leeward boat having established the overlap from clear astern and therefore subject to the restrictions of RRS 17, sail well beyond the lay line.  Of course the leeward boat would be penalised for a breach of the rule but should it be just one penalty or two?  The second being awarded for a deliberate breach of the rule.

If the overlap has been caused by the windward boat temporarily luffing to draw her stern line forward of the leeward boat, which becomes clear astern for just a short time, sometimes only a fraction of a second, then the umpires need to be clear that the clear was clear to the leeward boat before considering that the intent was to breach the rule deliberately.  Which is often not the case in these situations.

Nice these ‘simple rules’!

Ewan McEwan

June 2011

Background

Ewan, based on the Isle of Anglesey off the North Wales coast, has been an RYA Umpire for many years attending events all over the world and is currently Chief Umpire for the Extreme Sailing Series.  He continues to race competing his 83-year-old renovated Fife in the Menai Straits.

Reflections ...... coming soon

Just got back to Beaumaris, bit of a culture shock! Have been writing a lot about my experiences in China. Will add entries over the next few days .............

1st Daimen Match Race, Berlin, Germany

After the excitement of the Extreme 40s at the iShares Cup in Kiel last weekend it was a pleasure to get back to - relatively - a more baisc form of our sport. The VSaW, a wonderfully traditional sailing club on the shores of the Wansee lake, south-west of Berlin city centre, was the host of this brand new match racing event for women. Using four chartered Skippi 650s we had two days of match racing in light but eventful conditions. The best lake sailing has to offer; lots of pressure variation and numerous shifts to keep all the crews busy and tacticians earning their titles!


The club hope it will be the begining of something special - its counter-part the Berlin Match Race will hold its 16th edition this Autumn. This year they plan to have both an ISAF Grade 1 Open event as well as an ISAF Grade 1 Women's event. It will be a joint effort by two of the main clubs on the Wansee, VSaW and the Berlin Yacht Club.



There was much discussion in the evenings about the proposed women's match race event in the 2012 Olympic Sailing Games, and plenty of speculation about boats, formats, and qualifying structures. Hope it all gets sorted at the ISAF Annual Meeting in November, Madrid, ESP.

More 'extreme' than '40' at iShares Cup, Kiel, GER

Kiel, GER, hosted the latest edition of the iShares Cup featuring the Extreme 40 class. These boats, the race format, the Field of Play location, and the style of rule adjudication all add up to a fantastic presentation of our sport. What a great job Offshore Challange Events, OC Events, has done to show what the very best our sport has to offer.

More than 80,000 people came to watch over the three days of racing held just off the Kiel habour area in the inner fjord. Of course things had to be well timed; the ferries and commercial shipping couldn't be stopped but with short-course racing it was relatively easy to meet everyone's needs. And the ferry boat customers got a very close view of the action!

The commentators kept the crowds well informed and motivated, and when we did have a break in the racing - to re-lay the course - they organised 'fly-pasts' to trill the crowds - the biggest applause going to the boat flying the windward hull highest (one almost capsized which would have been a great talking point for the winter months!).

It was tough going for the umpires - although there were only ten competing boats competing the rapid change of bat speed meant that even if things settled down after the first top mark pressure points could easily develop at any stage of the race, and usually did! Hard work but great fun too.

Off to umpire 'normal' match racing next, in Berlin, GER ............

Its all over, roll on 2012!

Does sailing have a future as an Olympic sport?

Whilst sailing has been an Olympic sport for the past 100 years it is unlikely that unless we resolve the 'problems' with the presentation of our sport that it will enjoy another hundred years! I am sure all sports say they are 'different' and need 'special' treatment, but sailing does have some unique sports management qualities - to say the least!

There are no other sports where so many athletes are competiting at one time on the same course and who can influence each others' performance to such a high degree. Thus we have a fairly complex set of rules, procedures, policies and interpritations to govern those interactions.

The Racing Rules of Sailing are only one aspect of these 'rules'. Most competitors and officials would agree that the 'boat-to-boat' aspects of the rules are quite understandingable, stable, and well applied (particularly when racing is umpired!) - at least until the new rules for 2009-2012 are published!

What does seem to be letting our sport down at the moment is the interralationship between the various other rules; Measurement Regulation, class rules, Sailing Instructions, Notice of Race, Coach Boat Regulations, Rule 51 (of the Olympic Charter), Equipment Rules of Sailing, and the rest of the 21 documents that govern this event in one way or another. The result is that in the main, may be, most situations are understandable by the expereinced few but totally unintelligible for the majority of the public, our ultimate 'sponsors'.

We end up having situations; where there are two boats placed first in a race, where one country's athletes are competing in another country's boat (or equipment in Olympic terminology), where the additional identification - national flags, decals, and country letters - fall off or ruin years of sail development work because its the wrong material, where boats are reaching into so called 'windward' marks, where athletes and their support personnel spend three days rubbing down equipment because of faults in the manufacturing, where the data available to the media on mark roundings is inaccurate and misleading, where the top sports media from around the world are literally lost for words because of a lack of clarity of the situations, where competitors are disqualified because of minor infractions, .........

Yet the major inconsistencies in our sport are left untackled; to use a curretly popular phrase, maybe we have an 'elephant in the room'? We have a lot to do in the next four years. The key question is; are those who govern our sport (and, being an ISAF International Judge and International Umpire, I include myself in that group) ready, willing and able to take on the challenge?

All over in Qingdao, bring it on Beijing!

Sparky, the team GB manager, enjoying the post-event atmosphere at the organisers' cocktail party. We then went on to the local stadium for a full-on Closing Ceremony for the Sailing Olympics.

Qingdao has taken the Olympic and Paralympic sailing events to its heart - its incredible what support every, literally every, body has worked so hard; whether its picking up sea weed, volunteering, planting flowers, or cleaning streets, everyone in Qingdao has helped to make the events a success.

Its a privilege to be here to witness it .......... Weymouth, bring it on.

The show moves on .......

All the 'supplied equipment', RS:Xs and Lasers (Standard & Radial), is being packed up ready for re-sale in China, probably. Seems strange we have supplied equipment - any sailor that is here, certainly in the top ten, have their own stuff here anyway! Still what do I know?

What will be the 'equipment' in 2012? We all have to wait till November for the ISAF Annual Meeting to decide. Seems strange that we have decisions so late into an Olympic cycle - those that want to succeed in our sport will have been training for longer than 3 years and 10 months. But then there are a lot of strange things in our sport ......

Well the fat lady has sung her last song here in Qingdao!

On a rain swept break-water at the entrance to the Olympic Sailing Venue here in Qingdao, China, Sparky checks that what we saw happen is confirmed; yes, its a fourth Gold Medal for team GB in sailing, fantastic! And it was a Medal Race worthy of the name, lots of possibilities and lots of place changes all keeping the wet - and increasingly cold - spectator on the edge of their (wet) seats.

It was good practice for Weymouth! More soon ......

Womens' Match Racing is Olympic 'demonstration' sport!

Well they only managed one race for the Finn and Yngling classes today. What a shame the schedule didn't allow for there to be races started after 16:00 - other than the 49er all classes stayed out late except the Finn and Yngling (need to change that rule for 2012!).

So the GBR and NED are going to 'match race' for the Yngling Gold Medal tomorrow. The USA team are close to loosing their grip on the Bronze and there are 7 other teams with Olympic Medal possibilities hoping they will. The umpires had better be limbering up they'll need to be on top form!

Tomorrow sees the first event Medal Race at an Olympics, and it will be interesting to see how well it is received. There are large crowds here every day. Seems that going to the Olympics is seen as a day-out for the family.

I hope to have a ring-side seat .........

What do you call a sailng event with no racing?

So, now there has been no wind for the last one and a half days. I guess this is when the pressure starts piling on for competitors and race officials alike.

All racing was cancelled here today. Now most classes (apart from the Star and Tornado, who were due to have their practice race today) are behind the racing schedule by at least two races, and it was all going so smoothly. The Pacific high is dominating the weather here is Qingdao.

The weather gurus standing around the Official Notice Boards - everyone has an opinion - were predicting everything from no wind to too much wind. Guess we will just have to wait and see.

What is certain is that the organisers are no 'on the back foot' as Charlie Cooke, the Chief Race Officer, would put it. I wonder, will Weymouth & Portland be any better ...... in August traditionally it can be quite windless as well, though not this week I hear!

On yer bike!

Well you could be mistaken for thinking I am at the biking part of the Olympics judging from this picture! The amazing sailing facilities at this venue are all quite well spread out, so the most effective mode of transport (other than the 'golf buggies' provided by the organisers) is to have your own bike.

Or course, as with everything, there is a pecking order; the 'top' teams have the best bikes which travel the world in the teams' containers from venue to venue, the next ranked 'bikers' are those who have bought local bikes which are full-size, with gears and all the accessories. The next lowest down rank (like me) have a bike bought locally for about 350 RMB, or about Euro 30.

Funny how markets work; the light I bought and brought with me - top quality design and all the functions you can cram into a few square centimeters of space - and use to keep me safe going home (it gets dark here about 19:00) cost about the same as the bike I have!

All eights: 08/08/08

With eight being an important number in Asian cultures BOCOG (Beijing Organising Committee of Games) is planning to formally open the Games at eight minutes past eight in the evening of the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the century. That time is in one and a half days time. Except the football has already begun (in women's' football CHN beat SWE 2:1) and the Yngling and Finn have their practice race tomorrow in Course Area A, just off the breakwater of this magnificent sailing centre.

The BBC are here in force - great to see them finally taking a serious interest in sailing! Shirley Robertson is here with Richard Simmonds doing the interviewing with APP (Andrew Preaces' company) doing the production. Which is just great.

The CHN team and the GBR team have been put next to each other in the boat park - or Athlete Preparation Area to IOC - and so we have a direct line of view of all the interviews. There is a 'mixing' zone between the dinghy ramps and the boat park - sorry, Athlete Preparation Area - which allows the media very close access to the competitors as they come off the water. But it also allows competitors to walk straight through, if they choose, without being followed into the Athlete Preparation Area.

The CHN team had their Press Conference this afternoon; lots of questions about expectations, of course. The team manager played them down, of course. Seriously though, Qingdao is a particularly tricky venue - anything can, and does, happen. So even the most favorable competitor should not 'count chickens', as they say ............

What I am certain of is that if the CHN team do at least reasonably well then the Earth will be their Oyster. They will get the kind of backing that even GBR would dream of and in 2012 ...... who knows.

Big Day for China Team

Well we might have survived unscathed we will know in a couple of days; yesterday was the first scheduled day for Equipment Control - the measurement of the equipment, boats and boards, that will be used in the eleven events of the 2008 Olympic Sailing Regatta. China had drawn the short straw with 8 of the possible 11 classes being measured on Saturday - I think the Organising Authority decided to practice on the home team!

The day began at 08:00 with the primary (first ever) measurement of our number one Yngling spinnaker (events with spinnakers - Yngling, 470 Men/Women, 49er, and Tornado - can have two spinnakers 'controlled' with the second going into safe-keeping with the Olympic Measurement Committee and only used if the first one gets damaged) which had just been delivered hot from the sail maker in America thanks to the USA sailing team who brought it with them. Then at 09:30 all the classes started their measurement.

Things went from bad to worse; the 470 Women's boat measured light and then the Yngling measurer couldn't find the Template Reference Points on the Yngling, and then after spending hours putting the 'additional identification' on the sails we were told we would have to re-do them all as the wrong material had been supplied! The 'additional identification' at the Olympics includes a country flag, national letter codes (like GBR, CHN, ESP) and the name of the competitor/s sailing the boat/board. In Athens, 2004, this worked really well with the materials coming from a UK-based graphics company - who specialise in marine grade quality. The Beijing organising authority, BOCOG, in their wisdom, chose the 'save' money by having the materials produced locally. Unfortunately the company they used did not understand the difference between the marine environment and their normal product range and produced the sail stickers in vinyl instead of Dacron (sail cloth). Vinyl doesn't stay stuck to sails!

And, the stickers on the hulls of all the boats may not be of the right grade either. The glue needs to be a special one designed to be immersed and not dissolve. So we might end up with all the stickers coming off - actually if they come all the way off then that's okay, its when they come off half way and cause additional friction and drag.

Cheap is, as the organisers are finding out, sometimes expensive! They have now just placed an order with the 2004 company at 'express' prices which will be more than the amount they would have paid the first time around if they had gone to the specialist firm in the first place ......... another lesson for 2012.

Broken Balls delay equipment draw

The Organising Authority recruited the help of the China national lottery board today to help make the equipment draw - for RS:X windsurfers for the men and women, and the Laser and the Laser Radial, men and women, which is all supplied by the host city - this morning in the beautiful administration centre here at the Olympic Sailing Venue. Though by the time they got half way through I think they wished they hadn't!

Because there were more boats and boards (as in windsurf boards) to be allocated to the various national teams than there are balls in the normal lottery draw a special set of balls each with numbers on had been provided. However, the specification of these special balls was obviously different from the normal ones, as after a few cycles of ball picking the lottery machine ground to a halt with a broken ball stuck in the exit chute.

Hurriedly a replacement ball was found and the number of its deceased cousin written on it by hand, by the overseeing representative from ISAF (International Sailing Federation). This happened a second time, and the organisers got more and more nervous. They had adopted this new approach of draw replacing the traditional form where each competitor approaches the stage to make their own draw tombola style.

All those present thought that the traditional format should be used in future; none of this fancy lottery machine malarkey. Hope the sole representative, LOCOG - London 2012 - was taking notes!

CHN Team prepare to move to Olympic Village

Today was uniform day. Each member of the Chinese Olympic Sailing Team was provided with a suit case of items, including; half a dozen shirts, two dress shirts, a track suit, a blazer, slacks, dress belt, dress shoes, tie/scarf, toiletry bag, back-pack, duffel bag, sun glasses, 6 pairs of socks, one (!) pair of underpants, water bottle, shoe horn, two pairs of sandals, a pair of trainers, two caps, a dress hat, and, most important of all, the emblem of the Chinese Olympic Team.

Tomorrow is a very proud day for the team - they will be the first team to be welcomed on the first day of the formally opened Olympic Sailing Venue and Olympic Village here in Qingdao. It is a privilege for me to be invited to join them. It may seem strange that I am lining up with a team not of my nationality. Sport is increasingly international, even global, in terms of its support personnel - here we have Australians coaching the SIN team, Americans coaching the GER team, and even Brits coaching the RUS team. Who would have foreseen that during the depths of the Cold War?

May be Olympic sport is the great unifier that the IOC hopes it would be ......

Last day for the Olympic Development Squads

Well with a mixture of sadness and relief the CHN Team Radial Olympic Development Squad had their last training day here in Qingdao, China. Their Head Coach, Liu Xiaoma, ably assisted by his assistant coaches and the physical trainer have had a full programme of training over the last few weeks.

Each member comes from the Provincial Sailing Teams spread around the country. So whilst the members were looking forward to getting back home after many weeks away they were also sad about the end of this phase in their careers.

The hope is that the work they have done will have helped prepare the CHN Team Radial representative, Lijia Xu, to the highest level possible. They certainly pushed her right up to the last moments of the last day!

Also, the experience, knowledge and skills they have developed will be useful for their Provincial Sailing Teams, and the plan is that this will provide for an even more solid foundation for the next Olympic cycle. Next stop Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy in 2012!

Qingdao is getting ready

These building posters are amazing. You can see them from most view points in the city and out on the water in the Field Of Play, as it is called. Can't really see Weymouth or Portland having the same impact!