Optimist World Championship 2021 W O RD S: EMILY P O L S O N | IM AGES: M ATIA S C A PIZ Z A N O
Sailing
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fter waiting for more than a year since my first selection to represent Hong Kong at the World Championships in 2020 (which unfortunately had to be cancelled due to COVID-19), we were so fortunate to finally compete in 2021. The event took place at Lake Garda, Italy from 30 June to 10 July.
helped us prepare for the event through taking part in 2 Pre-worlds regatta’s and arranged daily training clinic’s with other countries and some amazing sailors and coaches such as Marco Gradoni (3x world Optimist Champion), Sven Stadel and Mauro Berteotti to compliment his own coaching skills.
Despite the pandemic, quarantine and the obstacles around international travel, five sailors qualified to represent Hong Kong at the 2021 Optimist world Championships at Fraglia Vela Riva in Riva del Garda at the northern end of the amazing Lake Garda, Trentino, Italy. I was the only sailor from Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and the only female sailor on the team. The other sailors were Peter Jessop and Seb Van Ommeren from the Hebe Haven Yacht Club, Ethan Kong and Vernon Ha from the Aberdeen Boat Club, we were able to get vaccinated and travel to Italy in order to represent Hong Kong as the 2021 Optimist Sailing Team.
The first 3 days of the Championships was the some of the most emotional and competitive sailing I have ever done, with the 255 boats being broken into 4 flights, I quickly learnt that what I would usually call a keeper being a top 20 result was not going to be enough to make Gold Fleet which was my goal, after day 1 with a 19 and a 27th I found myself in 104th, with some strong races over the next two days I was still in contention for Gold Fleet but on the last race of day 3 most of the Hong Team had really bad starts and in turn we all had another bad results and with only 1 drop available it meant we had to carry a bad race and we all missed Gold Fleet.
We were very lucky to be coached by Bird Bhanubandh (“Bird”) from Thailand who had been at Lake Garda for a few months already with some of the Thai sailors and already knew the conditions well and
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| NOVEMBER 2021 AHOY!
Team Racing took place on Day Four and Day Five of the Optimist World Championships, however we did not make it through to the second day
