stampa

Il Campione del Mondo Augie Diaz spiega i motivi dell'ottimo risultato della squadra statunitense agli ultimi Mondiali in Svezia (da un'intervista apparsa sul sito della Quantum).

"There are several theories on why the US team as a whole finished better at the US Snipe worlds this year. I think Henry Filter’s theory is a pretty good one where he thinks that several US sailors have been pushing the US harder in the last few years, making everyone else bring their level up to stay even – making everyone better. That is a big part of the story, but there are more factors as well.

1)      The US had sailed their Nationals two weeks before so we had all practiced hard as a lead up to the Nationals. Then we raced the Nationals and had two weeks after Nationals, before the worlds, to rest and get ready for the Worlds.

2)      Half of the team showed up in Espergarde the week before to sail a pre-regatta, but more importantly we spent the whole time tweaking our boats to our liking. When we finally got to the worlds site, our boats were ready, and we could focus on sailing.

3)      This was the first year that our team had been very open with each other on and off the water. After every day of sailing we all met to discuss tuning, weather, current, tactics, rules and so on. These meetings brought us together and helped each other find more speed, and also were motivating –especially after the US won the first two races, others began thinking “he can do it, so can I”.

4)      Peter Commette was instrumental in providing a framework for the team to operate together. The ten boats were split into two boat pairs for daily tuning sessions. Pairs of pairs could hook up for 4 boat sessions, but 6 boat sessions we agreed upon to be unproductive. With this basic framework, everyone had a tuning partner, and as the teams checked with each other before each race, knowledge was shared quickly. Peter’s simple system was more valuable that it appears in these past few lines. And,

5)      Lastly was the motivation factor. More teams knew going in that they had good speed, and their expectations were higher. As mentioned above, this was catching at the meetings and infectious."