Rivkin 49er Team
The Rivkin Report is a proud sponsor of Australia's most promising young
49er sailing team, who have secured a place in the Beijing Olympics in
2008. Ben Austin and Nathan Outridge from Lake Macquarie have worked hard
to achieve their Olympic dream.
Ben and Nathan bring with them a superb pedigree from the junior sailing
world. Nathan is one of only two people who won the world youth
championships three times before graduating into the adult sailing world in
2004. Nathan won his regattas as the skipper of two person boats, while Ben
spent most of his junior sailing career in the single handed and very
competitive Laser class. Ben also won a youth world title before graduating
into the 49er class with Nathan.
Nathan's story is one of determination and overcoming setbacks. In 2004,
he broke his back in a car accident while driving to a regatta. At first,
the doctors were unsure if he would live and they were confident he would
never sail again. Nathan spent three months in hospital with the time to
consider his future, only to emerge with a renewed determination to be a
full time sailor with an Olympic dream.
These two young men face hurdles that most of their international
competitors do not have to contend with, including having to work to
support their dreams, limited government support, constant travel to the
northern hemisphere and limited public exposure compared to other Olympic
sports. The Rivkin Report admires this fantastic Australian example of
persevering against such hurdles and is proud to support them in their
endeavours.
The Rivkin Report is throwing its support behind this dynamic and talented
duo because we are inspired by their determination to succeed and represent
Australia at the 2008 Olympics in a truly iconic, Australian-designed
sailing class.
Read on to find out about their sailing regattas.
SAILING UPDATE - MAY 2008
Ben and Nathan have been dieting hard now for around 6 months to bring
their weight down as low as possible. This is because of the expected light
wind conditions in China.
Coming off the back of their win at the World Championships this year,
they are considered one of the stronger teams, but the Olympics have proven
time and time again to be very difficult to crack. The fact that only the
best 20 boats from around the world qualify, along with the enormous
pressure, makes for a challenging environment.
The boys head to Europe next week to compete in Holland. On the way home,
they will do some training in China. Soon after returning home, they will
return to Europe for the last race of the European season in Germany before
another training stop in China, before coming home for final preparations
for the Olympics in August. There must be a few frequent flyer points being
accumulated by the boys!
The guys and their committed coach, Emmett Lazich, have put literally
everything into winning a medal and we hope they can crack it, but one
thing appears clear… they have left no stone unturned in their efforts to
get the best out of themselves and their equipment. Ultimately, that is all
anyone can do. We wish them the best and will be cheering. We look forward
to further updates leading into the games.
SAILING UPDATE - JULY 2007
The Rivkin 49er Sailing Team had a great result at the world championships
in Portugal. Nathan and Ben finished on the podium in third place,
guaranteeing Australia a place at the Olympic Games next year in China. It
is very unlikely that Australia would select a different team to go to
China, so it is pretty much guaranteed that our team will compete in
Beijing.
Their progress suggests they stand a real chance of a medal. With only 20
boats at the Olympics, it is easier to win than the World Championships.
For those interested in watching any of the sailing, December will be very
busy, with several regattas in Sydney before moving to Melbourne for the
2009 world championships in January.
SAILING UPDATE - AUGUST 2007
Hello All,
Over the last four weeks, we have been working in Qingdao, China as part
of the Australian Sailing Team. Qingdao is the venue for Sailing in the
2008 Beijing Olympics, located on the coast, about 2 hours flight south
east of Beijing. The venue has developed quite a reputation amongst the
sailing community for its extremely light winds, strong tides and hot,
humid weather.
For the first two weeks in China, we spent quite a few hours both on and
off the water getting familiar with the unusual weather conditions and
optimising our equipment. We also had the pleasure of launching our newest
boat "Fearless". The light and confused winds gave us the opportunity to
experiment with a wide variety of techniques and equipment options, as very
few 49er teams have a lot of experience in these conditions.
For the last two weeks, we have been competing in the 2007 "Good Luck
Beijing" Qingdao Sailing Test Event. This is the last major regatta in
Qingdao before the Olympics and saw all of top 49er teams here to gain some
experience. Nine races were completed in 6 days, with the results showing
all teams to have both good days and bad. At the end of 9 races, we were
third overall, with the Danish and British teams tied for first four points
in front and a group just behind us. No one team showed a particular edge
in the conditions, with all the races very close.
The medal race day turned out to be completely different to all previous
races. We had 15-18 knots of wind against a strong outgoing tide -
challenging and exciting 49er sailing conditions. We took quite an
aggressive approach to the race, as we were confident in our speed in these
conditions and saw it as an opportunity to "seize the day". After the first
lap, we were third in the medal race. We passed one boat up the last upwind
to round the last mark clearly second and in the Gold medal position.
However, immediately after the spinnaker hoist, we caught the spinnaker and
pole in one of the steep waves, breaking a rope in the spinnaker system.
The spinnaker washed under the boat, getting caught around the centreboard.
We eventually managed to get the sail back on the boat, however were unable
to hoist it again and finished the race ninth, leaving us in fifth overall.
We now know we have the skills and the opportunity to be serious
contenders for a gold medal come the Olympics next year. The confidence and
motivation we take from this is substantially more important than the
result this year. We now have a short break before heading to San Diego to
work with our American training partners in the lead up to their Olympic
Selection Trials.
Ben and Nathan
SAILING UPDATE - JULY 2007
Hello All,
The 49er World Championships finished a couple of days ago in Cascais,
Portugal. We are extremely happy to report that we achieved our best result
to date, finishing third overall after a very tough week of sailing.
We had been training in Cascais for two weeks before the worlds. We found
the conditions to be very favourable to our sailing - moderate to strong
winds which blew offshore and so had plenty of gusts and shifts. Extensive
mast and sail testing had lead us to a combination of mast and sail that
gave us a good speed edge in most conditions. Hence, we entered the regatta
very confident in both our speed and skills, knowing that we definitely had
the chance to do very well in the regatta.
However, as seems to always happen at international events, the weather
patterns that greeted us for the racing were very different to what we had
trained in. All of our qualifying races were held in extremely shifty,
gusty conditions. Wind shifts of 90 degrees were common and the odd cell of
wind at 180 to the normal breeze was not uncommon, with the breeze varying
frequently and randomly between 5 and 25 knots. In these immensely
challenging conditions, we had long days waiting for races, and when races
were run, they were in extremely fickle, random conditions. We even sailed
one race that started in 3 knots before building rapidly to 25 to 35kn
which turned into a race of survival - only two boats did not capsize and
only just over half the fleet finished the race. At the end of qualifying,
we had sailed consistently well to be inside the top 10 and had scored a
couple of firsts as well.
In the finals, the wind returned more to what we had seen before the
regatta. We had 8 -15kn of fairly steady offshore breeze that allowed
plenty of passing opportunities both upwind and downwind. One race, we lead
the whole race, only to have an incident at the committee boat while
finishing which left us capsized on the committee boat and eventually
finishing 24th in that race. Our protest that we had not been given the
room we were entitled to was dismissed by the protest committee. In another
race, we lead by a substantial margin when the race was abandoned due to a
30 degree windshift. Despite this, after the finals series we were
positioned 4th with a 5 point gap to 3rd and a 10 point gap to 5th.
The medal race, which features the top 10 boats and counts for double
points, was held in a light westerly - a breeze that we had not seen at all
while training in Cascais. The race track had many holes that proved fatal
if you were caught in one. Our strategy going in to the race was to sail a
moderately aggressive race. As the race panned out, we did finish 5th in
the race and the Italian team who was coming 3rd fell into one of the
wholes, finishing 9th and so handing us the Bronze Medal.
We are extremely happy to have finished 3rd at only our second 49er World
Championships. This gives us a massive boost to our confidence going into
the Olympic Test Event next month and allows us to start thinking about
being serious contenders for a gold medal at the Olympics next year. Our
immense gratitude goes out to our families, and partners Nikki and Lauren
for their patience and support.
Ben and Nathan
SAILING UPDATE - APRIL 2007
Princess Sofia Regatta, Spain
Hello All,
This was the first major regatta for the European summer. Although, it is
far from summer over here in Spain - average temperatures between 12 and 15
degrees and cold wind and water mean we have been rugged up both on and off
the water. We even drove through snow, sleet and hail to get here!
This was also our first regatta working with our new coach - Emmett
Lazich. Before the regatta, we spent one week training, doing some
intensive work on our boat speed and testing new equipment with aim for
selecting fast equipment for both the 2007 World Championships and for the
2007 Olympic Test Event.
The Princess Sofia Trophy started with 85 49ers, which included all from
the top 20 in the world. The regatta was plagued by very unstable breezes
and a wide variety of conditions making it very hard to get all the races
completed. Unfortunately, we had a couple of circumstances not go our way
in the qualifying series - one was a black flag after finishing 3rd (one
third of the fleet was black flagged) and then in the last race of
qualifying, we had two cartwheels in a tricky swell. This meant for the
first time, we did not qualify for gold fleet, only making silver. While in
silver, we proved we could sail well, scoring a first and third in the two
races completely, and winning silver fleet by a substantial margin.
We are now training for another week in Palma with Emmett and a few of the
other Australian 49er sailors. We have a few more days here before heading
to Hyeres for Semaine Olympique.
Ben and Nathan
Stay tuned for more updates from Ben Austin and Nathan
Outridge.
