Maloney and Meech to experiment in search for success

Alexandra Maloney & Molly Meech in the 49er FX on day 6 at the Rio 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition © Sailing Energy / World Sailing

Alex Maloney and Molly Meech won't be afraid to try different things when returning to racing over the next month in the hope it brings long-term success.

The Olympic 49erFX silver medallists will compete in their first major regatta since the Rio Games when they line up at next week's World Cup Final in Santander, Spain. They follow that with Kiel Week in Germany, where they will experiment with a handful of different scenarios as they look to turn silver into gold at Tokyo in 2020.

Maloney and Meech proved themselves as one of the world's best teams over the last Olympic cycle, winning the 2013 world title along with their silver medal in Rio, but also finished down the fleet too often for their liking.

"We want to become more consistent and perform at events we want to do well at," Maloney said. "It means we are going to try things at different regattas.

"At Santander, we want to put a really good event together. We are getting back into it after a long break and we want to see how we measure up against the other teams. We definitely want to win it.

"We are going to treat Kiel as a learning event. We had a few weaknesses in the last Olympic cycle so we are not going to be afraid to try different things in the hope of getting better."

Maloney and Meech have already made changes, largely because they have brought Nathan Handley on as coach. Handley previously worked with 2012 Olympic 470 champions and 2016 silver medallists Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie, although had one season with Maloney and Meech when they won their world title.

They returned to fulltime training about two months ago after an extended break following the Rio Olympics and are itching to get back into race mode.

"Having a really long break was challenging because we have been sailing all our lives," Maloney said. "But it was also necessary because there was so much anticipation and build-up to Rio.

"We need to be fully committed to another Olympic campaign and there was a danger of going through the motions if we had kept going straight after Rio. It's been fun working with Nathan again."

Maloney and Meech will be part of a small New Zealand team in Santander, where they will be joined by 49er duo Josh Porebski and Trent Rippey, who finished 10th in April's World Cup regatta in Hyeres, France.

The quartet have been training together on the water but it's hasn't been without its challenges, with Auckland's autumn weather dishing up either very little wind or too much. It's another reason why Maloney and Meech are keen to get to Europe.

"We are pretty happy with our boat handling," Maloney said, "but we've not done a lot in big waves and that's something Santander is known for.

"We're not putting too much pressure on ourselves in our first regatta back but we want to see how we stack up against other teams and I'm sure they will be looking out for us as well. In the last Olympic cycle we were one of the teams who were always there to compete for medals and, while we won't have a target on our backs, we are ones to watch."