Chris 249 said..JustinL said..IMO Australia has enough talent to have a complete elite squad. And yes its a fact we do qualify for the Olympics every time by privateers but they get blocked by Australian Sailing.
The policy is unless you are a real medal chance we will not send you. And AS will say something like, its ok for you to be Aussie Champ and Qualify for the games and become a Olympian but we want to put the extra pressure on you to go the extra mile and to medal.
But the real reason is funding. If AS has 5 teams going and all 5 medal then they receive massive funding same as Australia Swimming! If they send 10 teams get the same result of 5 medals then they get a lot less cash.
Guys you have to understand they are a lot of hangers on traveling the world having parties going out to endless dinners etc etc. We just cant jeopardise that!!!
Oh and another thing. There is no real understanding of what it takes to be good at Windsurfing by AS in upper management. Yes they are good at sit down boats but windsurfing is not only handling, speed, tactics, strategy, Psychology its also
extreme fitness. It takes 3 cycles to develop this so you have to expose the juniors to worlds or European champs early in life. AS said before London, ok yes we will send one of you, but then they didn't!! This broke a lot of trust in the fleets in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth. Its kinda hard to ask somebody to take 12yrs of their life and probably over or close to a million dollars as a privateer.
So I think this is why we are not at the Olympics.
I know you know your stuff, but can I ask a couple of questions?
1- Sure, pumping brings in a huge amount of fitness but what is the objective measure that states that windsurfers require significantly more fitness than say Finns (they claimed to be the most athletic because they reckoned they generated more power) or Lasers, where there are huge fleets of potential Olympians and where fitness is very important, as Dr Blackburn seems to say?
By the way, given that Olympic medal aspirants all work incredibly hard and none of them have more than 24/7 in a week, if windsurfing requires extreme fitness then it must mean that Olympic windsurfers spend a greater percentage of their time working on fitness than (say) Olympic Laser sailors do. If so, what do Olympic windsurfers sacrifice in order to spend more time on physical fitness?
2- Guys like Ben O'Connor go from being noobs to achieving finishes like fourth in the Tour de France inside two Olympic cycles. Cycling is a much bigger sport than windsurfing, so why could Ben go from never having done a race to #4 in the Tour within two cycles if windsurfers need three?
Let me make it clear - I'm very well aware that cycling is different to windsurfing in many ways. However on the purely physical side Ben O'Connor is certainly far from exceptional. A depressing number of top cyclists have gone almost straight from noob to world class because of their exceptional natural talent.
If fitness is so important in Olympic windsurfing then why does it take more cycles than being competitive in (say) pro cycling? And if inherited characteristics like Co2 max are as important in Olympic windsurfing as in cycling, then should those whose genes happened to roll other ways really care about what happens to those whose genes allegedly fit the requirements of Olympic windsurfing?
3- I'm not attacking your points, I'm asking for more information. I know that in many ways windsurfing is incomparably more complex than cycling, which I used for a comparison above, and therefore Olympians need more training in technique, tactics, etc. I'm just interested in the issues.
Short version: Cycling is a sport where tactics can reward the physically talented and trained. But you can have mediocre tactics and an excellent engine and do very well. Especially in a Grand Tour, having the physical engine, right body type and ability to recover are paramount.
Sailing is where the physically talented and trained can better execute the tactics. If your tactics are mediocre, it's almost impossible for physical fitness to overcome them.
Long version:
One big difference in windfoil racing and cycling is the tactical side. At the pro level in cycling, you have a team director screaming in your ear piece the whole race (however, in the Olympics they don't allow this) as well as your teammates/team captain on the road. I'm not taking anything away from the tactical side of cycling, it's a lot more than cranking the pedals hard. But you definitely have help in figuring out which wheels to follow and which breaks to cover. In windsurfing and most sailing, the skipper has to make their own decisions and having done just a bit of both (puts me on the left side of the Dunning-Kruger curve
), windsurf racing has more elements to learn and compute. Also, a pro cyclist really doesn't have to tune his/her gear - it's done by a mechanic and even the positioning on the bike is done many times by a specialist. Courses can be scouted and learned so there's less variability there, too.
As well, the "noobs" that do well in cycling almost invariably have an extensive background in similar sports e.g. running, cross-country (O'Connor) etc. so the engine has been trained for a long time. They may be cycling noobs but not competition noobs.
A last thing in favor of cyclists, especially Europe based ones, is the shear number of available competitions so they can race, rinse, repeat several times a week. Sure, you can do practice races at the club but it's difficult to replicate the intensity of a large scale regatta the same way.
Having said that, it'll be interesting in Paris to see the composition of the fleet as I wouldn't be surprised if there are some "noobs" there.
