World Championship challenge looms for British 470 crews
by Lindsey Bell 10 Oct 2015 17:07 BST
12-17 October 2015
Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark are selected to represent Team GB for Rio 2016 Olympic Games in the Women's 470 class © Richard Langdon / British Sailing Team
Olympic silver medallist Hannah Mills says next week's 470 World Championships in Israel (12-17 October) will be a 'massive event' as nations and sailors vie for remaining qualifying berths for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
For both Mills and Saskia Clark and their teammates in the 470 Men's event, Luke Patience and Elliot Willis, the Olympic selection battle is over, with both crews having already confirmed their places on the sailing startline for Great Britain next year.
But with country quota places and individual qualifying spots still up for grabs among the worldwide fleet, Cardiff's Mills is expecting a tough battle as they join 42 other female crews in the world title chase in Haifa next week.
"There's certainly a lot of chat about countries getting qualified for the Games so it's a massive event for a lot of people both for country qualification and for individual selection places as well," the 27-year-old explained.
"It's certainly a big event and everyone's looking to peak for this event throughout the year. We'll definitely need to be on our best game to be in with a shout of the medals."
Mills continued: "Our selection maybe lets a teeny bit of pressure off for this event now, but for us we're looking at it as the last big event for our 2015 season so we still want to go out and put on our best performance.
"It's still a World Championship and you don't get the chance to try and get on the podium or win them very often. We'll certainly be going out there with that in our minds."
West Mersea's Clark added: "Because of the logistics of getting here, some of the smaller nations haven't come like they would come to maybe a more central European venue, but all the teams we see as our main competitors for next year are here so from that perspective [the focus] doesn't change that much.
"It's important for us – you want to race against them and race against the best and keep improving your skills and that's what we'll be focussed on next week."
The British Sailing Team duo won the world title in 2012 and earned a bronze medal at the 2014 in Santander, but feel they are in a better place in their campaign now than 12 months ago.
"It would be fair to say we didn't feel anywhere near our best last year at Santander," Clark explained.
"We were still a bit rusty from the time we took out following the Games and hadn't quite got into our rhythm yet for this cycle. That's definitely not the case now. We've had a great year training and racing since Santander and, touch wood, we've been injury free which had been a bit of a problem in the past. So we're pretty raring to go and race these Worlds."
Sevenoaks's double World Champion Elliot Willis agrees that the pressure of Olympic qualification will be playing on some sailors' minds this week, where six country qualifying berths will be up for grabs in the men's fleet for those who hadn't already qualified via the Santander Worlds last year.
"Someone came up to us in the boat park the other day and said 'be nice to us all week!'," said Willis. "They haven't qualified their country for the Games yet and so clearly there are a few who will probably be feeling the pressure this week."
The men's event will see 63 teams from 33 nations battling it out for the world title.
"More people will be bare-knuckle fighting at this event that they were at the Test Event," 2012 silver medallist Patience suggested. "We've heard a lot of people saying that the Test Event wasn't part of their qualification. The Worlds is always a big deal – everyone wants to be World Champion!"
Both Mills-Clark and Luke Patience-Elliot Willis have made the trip to Haifa off the back of an intensive period of competition and training on the Games waters in Rio which, with their tickets now secured, is the primary focus over the next ten months.
"We took a camp out of our calendar from here and put one in in Rio." Willis continued. "We made a conscious effort to move our diary around and spend less time here and more time in Rio."
"The Test Event was a target event for us and it's always a challenge in our sport when you target an event and then have another big event soon after it," Patience added.
"But we've come here and we can win the World Championships. We're more than able to race our best here. The drivers and the motives are exactly the same whether it's the start of the season or the end of the season.
"I personally would like to come away from this event with no real big things to talk about, to have a solid event. If we were to do that I'm sure we would be standing somewhere on or near the steps of the podium."
Joining Mills and Clark in the women's fleet will be Eilidh McIntyre, sailing with Jess Lavery at this event, plus Podium Potential squad pairing Amy Seabright and Anna Carpenter.
Racing at the 470 World Championships gets underway on Monday 12 October, with the final medal races for the top ten crews scheduled for Saturday 17 October.
Results will be available at 2015worlds.470.org with news and updates via www.britishsailingteam.com, on Facebook or on Twitter.