Selected Olympic Team Sailors Jason Saunders and Paul Snow Hansen are competing in the 470 boat at the London 2012 Olympic Games and have given us an update to their progress in 2012 in the lead up the Games. Jason and Pauls Update: Its been a good start to the year for us, we have got in a lot of quality training, mixed in with our domestic racing season and feel prepared for our first Europe trip of the season. We had a nice break over the Christmas and New Year period to recharge and enjoy ourselves, which gave us some time to let the Olympic Team selection sink in, and put us in a good place to start our biggest year to date. We have had some up and down results in the NZ regattas, we won almost every race in Sail Auckland and felt really good, however had a shocker in the Nationals down in Tauranga. A combination of being a bit tired after a lot of sailing, plus trying to lose weight and just not sailing well led to a bad regatta. We were happy enough to let it go and move on though, we knew there wasnt too much to read into there and had a couple of days off before getting back into it. We have also had Olympic gold medallist, Nathan Wilmot from Australia, come over for a week of coaching which was amazing. He was very open and helped us come up with some new ideas as well as confirming what we had been doing was on the right track. We have also got a new 470 boat which is very exciting! We have shipped it overseas and look forward to training and racing with it in the coming few regattas. So after all this we are now packing our bags and, like normal, rushing around getting all the last minute things we should have got weeks ago! First up on the cards is the Princess Sophia regatta, in Palma, Mallorca. This is a regatta we have done the last couple of years and brings an extremely competitive field. The racing start from 31 March and runs until 7 April. Having not raced in a big fleet since the Worlds, it will be a good chance for us to put the things we have been working on into practice against the worlds best. After Palma we head straight to Cot DAzur, near Toulon in France for the French Spring cup. We really enjoy going to this regatta, and had our first podium finish at an overseas event there last year, finishing second. This event runs from 11th to 16th April. This will then conclude our first overseas trip of the year, and no doubt we will have some more stories to tell! We both feel confident with the way we are sailing, and are really looking forward to getting back into the competitive racing only Europe can provide! I would just like to say thanks to everyone for your support since being named in the NZ Olympic team, its great to know how many people are behind us, and keeps motivating us for this big year ahead! Cheers, Jason Saunders & Jon Paul
Tweet Share