Following a tough four-month europe-trotting experience, training on and off the water and racing in top level events, the young 49er team made up of Sebastian Ripard and Benji Borg have been in Malta since August relaxing, earning some money and getting back into their fitness.
During this ‘break’ Benji was nursing an injury but Seb found time to crew on Jaru for the Rolex Middle Sea Race. He was part of the new J133’s success – third overall in IRC, first in class in IRC and first overall in ORC.
Yet, Seb (23) and Benji (21) still share that common dream – the London Olympics – which is their ultimate sailing objective. Thus in the first week of November, the Malta 49ers were back on the water sharing seven days of intensive training together with a Hungarian duo who they had met while on their European tour.
Balazs Haidekker (21) and Demeter Nobilis (22) are the Hungarian champions and have been sailing the 49er for two years now.
They have the same aspirations as Malta49ers but not necessarily for London 2012 since they are still studying and sailing part-time.
The young Hungarian sailors drove from Budapest to Vienna from where they flew to Malta. They brought their own mast and sails and Seb and Ben made their boat available for the visitors.
But how important is training with other teams?
“Even though there is a lot that we can work on by ourselves, such as boat handling and technique, it is very important to train with other teams when working on speed and mast settings. One needs a pacer to judge what works, what gives you better speed and what doesn’t, since in sailing the 49er there are a lot variables on the boat such as rig settings, sheet tension... the list goes on and the set-up keeps changing as conditions shift.
“So, speed testing is always an ongoing process, even among the top teams,” explained Sebastian.
It was a tough daily training schedule indeed.
Ben and Seb continued with their fitness programme on their own: cardio in the morning and core classes in the evening. They trained with the Hungarians for 3-4 hours on the water daily before spending another hour on land looking through video footage and debriefing.
But how are the Hungarians doing here?
“We are a slight level ahead so it was a good chance for them to sail with a faster team. Besides, the sailing conditions in Malta are ideal over the winter considering that they normally practise in lakes,” Benji said.
What were the impressions of the Hungarian visitors of Malta as a winter training destination?
“We loved it here and could not understand why more northern Europeans were not using Malta as a training base during the wintry months,” Nobilis said.
“Apart from comfortable temperatures, Malta presents very varied wind and sea conditions, which make these islands a great place for training, in all type of possible race conditions; varied wind strength and a lot of variation in sea state.
“These are definitely the best conditions we have ever sailed.”
So, Malta 49er are back riding the waves besides focusing on next year’s campaign, budget, fund-raising, logistics, etc.
A positive factor of their campaign was the confirmed support from their team of sponsors.
This means that EC English Language Centres and Yacht Help Ltd are again their main backers with other major support being ex-tended by the Malta Tourism Authority and Cisk Excel.
Furthermore a month of solid training leading to Christmas is planned with a German coach to be followed by a British 49er team and their coach for another week.
So, things certainly seem to be progressing for our young sailors, especially in comparison to where they were this time last year.