The Olympic Games is the pinnacle for many athletes, but when your sport isn’t in the programme and you can’t shake that feeling you have to be a part, you either look elsewhere or you let a bit of luck and good timing take the lead. For Ireland’s 49erFX sailor Saskia Tidey, it was the latter writes Richard Aspland.
From her reclined position in a travelling chair next to her skiff on windless Hyères morning, Tidey says, “I hate waiting, I get fidgety.” Despite what she says, her demeanour is relaxed and open as she has to wait onshore for the wind to pick up so she can go to work. But her delay is our gain as we get to know more about the 6”2’ crew.
Her height is a bit of a clue to her previous life in sport, Tidey was an international netball player, “I played netball for Ireland for four, almost five years. We competed at a couple of European Championships but the funding wasn’t great, so entering at a world level was financially impossible for us.”
The world stage was something Tidey craved and she knew what her pinnacle event was, “I grew up doing netball and it was very natural for me. I really enjoyed doing it. It was something I was very confident in, but it wasn’t an Olympic sport. The Olympics for me is the top of the game and I always had that ambition to compete at that level.”
Although the five rings were in her thinking, getting there was more down to good timing and one self-less sailor, “Tim Goodbody,” Tidey remarks, “he sacrificed so much of his own time. I wouldn’t have started sailing if it wasn’t for him. He is an amazing guy.”
Goodbody was campaigning for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the Finn, but as Tidey said, dedicated time to bring young talent through in Ireland at the same time. He was given a grant to focus on one sailor, coach them, train them and nurture a talent. Tidey was that talent and the aim was the 2009 Youth Sailing World Championships. Needless to say, Tidey made it and sailed the Laser Radial at the Buzios Championships in Brazil.
Sitting and talking to Tidey you get the feeling she takes everything in her stride and adapts to situations with ease. But with that calm persona that puts you at ease, you know that beneath there is a determination to succeed in sport. Something which came to the fore when she moved to Sydney, Australia, “I sailed 18ft skiffs in Sydney for seven months on the first all-girls crew ever in that competition, and to hop from a Laser Radial to a pretty bad-ass boat and racing against really big grown men was a pretty ballsy thing for us to do.
“They weren’t quite the fitness levels of the 49er, but you have to have a lot of strength. I had to put on about 10kgs to be on the boat. I just had to put on the weight, I almost looked like a Finn sailor” remarked Tidey, showing a cheeky side to her personality.
“I did that in 2012 and the [London] Games had just finished and I had the Olympic bug. I knew that I hadn’t had enough. I came home from Australia and the FX had come out around the same time, I thought I really need to get involved in that.”
An honest Tidey admitted that her crewing skills were not as good as they needed to be, but the lure of the Olympics and the ‘cool’ looking FX was to strong, she had to get a helm, “I joined up with Andrea Brewster who had actually sailed for Team GB for about ten years in the Laser Radial, but her mums side [of the family] were all from Ireland so she had that connection there. She swapped to come and sail with me for Ireland and we started our campaign.”
Sacrifices had to be made so Tidey could follow her Olympic dream, for her and her family. The pair relied a lot on their families to kick start their push for Rio and were totally self-funded. Tidey took comfort from the fact the people closest to her supported and believed in her.
The belief that her family had was well founded, Tidey and Brewster qualified for Rio 2016 and the Olympic experience Tidey had been waiting for.
With knowledge from two sports at an elite level, Tidey could draw on her experiences from netball and apply and adapt them to her sailing, even in an abstract sort of way, “Netball helped me with team management and fitness definitely, but crewing has increased my coordination even more. It gave me at a young age a professional view and idea of sport, which I could apply very quickly to my sailing, something which I didn’t get from sailing at a young age like most others.
“Netball is a team sport, and sailing this boat you definitely need to be a team. You spend a lot of time together and you learn how to be a team with your partner. That is training in itself. You can train perfect skills, but if you can’t be there for each other and work as a team you will never get the best out of each other.”
Being there for each other doesn’t just apply to her sailing partner, the whole fleet spend so much time together that you get to know and get along with a lot of other people from every culture imaginable, “We kind of joke that it is like a traveling circus. It’s amazing to think that we are from such different places all over the world but we all end up at the same place. It’s kind of a special thing you know.
“Everyone has such respect for everyone else for just having a boat on the start line. And even after this is all over, you know you have friends for life.”
It is hard to argue with her opinion as surrounding us are teams waiting to go out on the water, sharing jokes, laughing along together and eating food. As for Tidey, her ability to take the positives out of situations, her willingness to learn, and just the ease at the way you can talk to her, there is no doubt she will be seeing those 49erFX sailors for a long time after see decides her sailing adventure is done.
Tidey and her helm Brewster haven't had the best of starts at the Sailing World Cup Hyères as they sit toward the lower end of the fleet, but with plenty of racing to go, the pair will be looking to land a place in Sunday's medal race with a late push for the top.
