Howth's Robert Dickson goes into French Olympic Week (24-29th April 2023) in Hyerés recovering from a viral infection over the past week but it is not the only issue confronting the Howth Yacht Club ace and Tokyo 2020 crew-mate Seán Waddilove in the build-up to Paris 2024.

It's not clear just how much practice was achieved in the past fortnight but following the giant Princess Sofia Trophy regatta in Palma, Mallorca, extra practice for light air conditions was on the cards for the Irish 49er sailors, as their performance in windier conditions when they leapt into the lead was clearly linked to their overall result.

It seems like only yesterday that the Olympic debutantes packed up from Tokyo, but the sprint is on for Paris 2024, and the just-finished Princess Sofia Trophy 2023 was the first chance to see the new characters and who is returning.

For all the talk of Olympic sailing falling apart, Palma showed otherwise with a full bay and a very healthy-looking Olympic slate.

There's been no news from Dickson and Waddilove themselves, but 49er coach Matt McGovern has given forth on Palma's positives and negatives. "There were some really good positives, like having good days and leading the regatta," said McGovern. "The crux is executing the starts well and boat speed in the light stuff - if we don't start well, then we don't have the boat speed to recover and get back on plan," he added.

But what is equally frustrating for the Irish duo, (who were on target for a debut medal in Tokyo until an overweight trapeze harness got in their way) is the fact that the 49er Class has had the biggest shake-up with all of the medalists retiring post-Tokyo but were unable to capitalise on it.

As analysis from the 49er class reveals, the changing of the guard runs deeper than the medalists, with only nine of the 20 sailors from the top 10 in Tokyo still sailing and only two in-tact partnerships. That's a lot of open real estate for a fleet in the queue behind the dominant forces of Australia's Outteridge and New Zealand's Burling for a decade.

It seems likely a return now to the sort of racing that was expected in the 2000s, where winners changed on a regatta-to-regatta basis. With all their Tokyo experience, this must be an opportunity for Dickson and Waddilove.

It was certainly looking like that prior to Palma when they appeared to reap the rewards of sixth place at Mallorca Sailing Centre Regatta 2023. And there was no doubting their regatta potency either when they posted two wins on Palma's windy Wednesday, but their inability to hold on to that overall lead and not even make the top ten for the medal race is a head-scratching moment. 

Beck and Gunn

The duo will now deal with some formidable new competition, such as Palma winners Logan Dunning Beck and Oscar Gunn (NZL), who took second in the medal race to cruise and a nine-point victory. This Kinwi pair started out gold fleet brilliantly, winning the first two races and only had three races out of the top 10 all week. The team is in its eighth year on the international circuit and its fifth at the front end of the fleet. They won Kiel week 2019 and came third at the Oceania Championship in Auckland immediately prior to the 2019 Worlds, but couldn't wrestle the New Zealand entry from Burling and Tuke for Tokyo and have all the tools to be contenders in Paris.

The 49er story in Palma is a down-under tale, with four of the top five places going two each to New Zealand and Australia. With Max Paul (AUS), Tom Burton came second despite an over early in the first regatta race. Tom is the 2016 Laser gold medalist and 2019 Laser World Champion, and this second-place finish would be the best finish for a laser convert to 49er ever. Many have tried, most noticeably Robert Scheidt (BRA), but none have scored medals at top regattas until now. There were a few jokes in the boat park about 20-knot gybes being on the to-do list still, as the regatta was a light affair, but credit is due after three years of dedicated training allowing his elite sailing talent to show. 

McHardie and McKenzie (NZL) finished third after a stellar opening series had them in the lead after qualifying. They sailed a consistent final series and could have won, but a ninth in the medal race let them down a bit to close it out. 

The European fleet claimed half of the top 10, with the usual contenders having ups and downs. Wen and Liu from China came eighth, repeating their performance from ninth at the 2023 Worlds in Nova Scotia. One theme to keep an eye on could be the diversity of fleets top performances have been coming from. European, New Zealand, Australian and Chinese fleets each delivered top 10 performances after six months sailing apart. At this late stage of a quadrennial, it's been more common for the top teams to have segregated into elite groupings. Perhaps with covid forcing everyone home, teams have found a more local way to develop. 

Guilfoyle and Durcan

New rivals for the Irish Paris slot are Séafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan (Royal Cork Yacht Club), who claim to have made significant gains over the winter training season. They will be looking for a gold fleet finish to Hyeres after posting 40th overall in Palma.

With just over three months remaining until the World Sailing Championships at The Hague (Netherlands), where the first nation places will be decided for Paris 2024, it will be all to play for.

Five Irish sailors will be looking to make a big impression at the 49er Worlds 2022 in the frigid waters of Nova Scotia, which get under way this coming Wednesday 31 August.

In the 49er division, the experienced skiff duo of Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove (Howth Yacht Club/Skerries Sailing Club) will be up against the new Royal Cork pairing of Séafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan within a challenging field.

Séafra Guilfoyle (left) and Johnny Durcan

Meanwhile, in the 49erFX, Dun Laoghaire’s Saskia Tidey and new Team GB skiff partner Freya Black will be looking to improve upon their 24th-place finish in last month’s Europeans and make a bigger splash at Hubbards on St Margaret’s Bay, some 50km west of Halifax.

Robert Dickson (left) and Sean Waddilove

The village’s community waterfront on the site of a former fish processing plant has been completely transformed in preparation for the championships hosting the cream of 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 racers the world over.

Racing at the 2022 World Championship runs from Wednesday 31 August to Monday 5 September with daily live streams from Day 3 (Friday 2 September). 

Ireland's Olympic skiff campaigners finished off the 49er European Championship on Sunday (10th July 2022) making the best of their silver fleet series in Aarhus, Denmark.

Tokyo Olympians Robert Dickson (Howth Yacht Club) and Sean Waddilove (Skerries Sailing Club) closed the gap on the silver fleet leaders but ultimately had to accept a second place at the end of their 16-race championship.

The pair had been leading their final race when the light breeze filled in from behind bringing the chasing pack up to them and they placed ninth.

Séafra Guilfoyle with Jonny Durcan of the Royal Cork Yacht Club had the best performance of the day in the Silver fleet when they scored back to back third places and held on to their eighth place in that division and 33rd overall.

Both crews are now focused on the 49er world championship scheduled for Halifax, Nova Scotia at the end of August where strong Irish performances are expected.

With the Paris Olympics just two years away, next Summer will see the first qualification opportunities at the combined Sailing World Championships scheduled for the 10th - 20th August 2023 in The Hague, Netherlands.

With three remaining qualification races planned both of Ireland's 49er crews will need to move up a gear to secure a top 25 place for the gold fleet in Denmark on Thursday.

Tokyo 2020 reps Robert Dickson (Howth YC) with Sean Waddilove (Skerries Sailing Club) looked to put a shaky start to the Aarhus Championships on Tuesday behind them when they were disqualified from the first race. The pair had a second and fifth place but a jammed cleat proved costly in Wednesday's opening race meant they lost 15 minutes from the race and again incurred maximum points and are 37th in the 89-boat fleet.

One place ahead, team-mates Seafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan from the Royal Cork YC had a 17th and two 18th places for the day.

Mihovil Fantella of Croatia bolted the port wing back onto his 49er early this morning after a starting line crash in Tuesday’s last race wrecked his boat, sails and rig. After some late-night epoxy work and hours of rigging they hammered out a 1, 10, 2 today which dropped them in a group of six teams looking to break the stronghold on first held by Lambriex/Werken (NED) who are four points clear of the Croatians in second.

“Luckily the accident was the last race of the day,” said Mihovil as he and his brother pulled their mast down to re-calibrate settings after today’s racing. “Sime was in a protest to 10, I was there fixing and preparing for the new day. You can’t do much about that you just have to go straight on fixing and try to be as prepared as you can.”

The FX fleets were free of accidents and drama, and the consistency of the top four, six points separating them all, is a fine preview of the tension that will build when the gold fleet races begin Friday.

The Schmidt sisters of Denmark have been going from strength to strength this week, rounding the top mark of race 6 in second behind Maloney/Hobbs (NZL). They slipped to third in that race but still hold a two-point lead over Bobeck/Netzler (SWE) and Roble/Shea (USA) who is another one point behind in third.

Aleh/Meech (NZL) had a blinder of a day with a 5, 2, 1 and the pair is finally settling into a form they they both know from precious sailing in the Olympic Games, albeit with different partners.

“It’s just nice to go sailing again,” said Aleh this morning as she dropped shroud pins in new settings. Since her gold in London and silver in Rio, both in women’s 470, she has been a national coach and is a vice President at world Sailing. Meech was Maloney’s partner in Tokyo last summer.

A steady 15 knots was pressing down on the two FX fleets in the afternoon on the Bay of Aarhus, but the three 49er race circles saw solid white caps and gusts well into the 20s for their morning races.

While Lambriex/Werken (NED) had a hiccup in race six sailing their throwout (9th), standouts Colley/Connor (AUS) have been consistently stringing together a beautiful scoreline to leave them in a three-way tie for third that includes Peters/Sterritt (GBR) and McHardie/McKenzie (NZL). The latter’s teammates Dunning Beck/Gunn (NZL) have also been finding their wheels after a disastrous Kiel Week result of 47th.

“We just really had to go back to basics,” said Dunning Beck who came tantalizingly close to unseating Olympic gold medalists Burling/Tuke (NZL) for the Tokyo 49er berth. “We watched videos and just are slowly finding our way back.”

Gunn said the pair are humble, not thinking this week’s string of solid races means they are back in business. Dunning Beck added carefully, “We are putting it in our pocket, but it’s not all the way in yet.”

Results here

While the 49er World Champions may have grabbed an early gold at the Allianz Regatta in the Netherlands yesterday, Ireland's Tokyo 2020 reps Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove are very much in the fight for a silver medal in the medal race on Saturday.

Dutch 49er sailors Bart Lambriex and Floris van der Werken have secured the gold medal on day four of the Hempel World Cup Series at the Allianz Regatta.

As Afloat reported earlier, Dickson and Waddilove, from Howth Yacht Club and Skerries respectively and Lucas Rual/Emile Amoros (FRA) hold second and third currently, but many teams are breathing down their neck and ready to knock the Irish and French off the podium.

Sitting on 54 points Ireland has a five-point margin over the French but only 12 points separate second to fifth place overall in the 40-boat fleet.

With temperatures reaching to 25 degrees and winds picking up from 12 to 19 knots by the end of the balmy afternoon, the Markermeer waters between Amsterdam and Almere delivered stunning sailing conditions for all 10 fleets.

The perfect wind enabled race committees across all courses to make up most of the races lost to lighter and more fickle breezes earlier in the week.

In the 49er, Lambriex and van der Werken reminded their rivals why they won the world title in Oman at the end of last year. Winning five of the last six races, the Dutch go into Saturday’s Medal Race with an unassailable 29 point advantage. The gold medal is theirs.

Dutch 49er sailor Bart Lambriex and Floris van der Werk (NED) secured the gold medal Photo: Sailing Energy/Hempel World Cup Series Allianz Regatta

Floris van der Werken explained their winning approach: "It was quite a strong field. A few of the worlds best are missing, but not many. We didn't really focus on the results this week, though, we never do. The focus was on communication onboard. We try to sail as one brain but with the capacity of two. Four eyes see more than two, but we have to think the same. That went very well this week. If the communication is good, if we give each other the right information, then we make the right decisions and we win."

Results in all classes are here

No Irish representation in the medal races at the Semaine Olympique Francaise (French Olympic Classes Week) in Hyères is a disappointment for Irish Olympic sailing efforts but there is consolation in the two top 15 finishes achieved in what is the second biggest regatta since Tokyo.

Laser/ILCA7

Carlow sailor Finn Lynch finished 13th overall in the ILCA 7 (Laser) after coming fifth in both races yesterday demonstrating he has the speed even if nursing an arm injury, missing the medal race by just 12 points.

His 21-year-old rival for Paris 2024 Ewan McMahon (Howth YC) moved up again in the fleet to finish 23rd overall, a result that confirms he is an exciting prospect and Ireland's second most successful full rig sailor since Mark Lyttle, Ireland's inaugural Laser helmsman at Atlanta 1996. 

The pair are now in preparation for the World Championships, a highlight of the year where Lynch will defend his 2021 silver medal in Mexico in May.

49er

With less wind than on previous days, Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove (Howth YC and Skerries SC) finished in 15th place in the 49er class after the day’s three races. Rivals Séafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan (Royal Cork YC) finished in 30th place overall.

Full results here

The regatta concludes today Saturday 30 April.

Ireland's 49er team, Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove signed off their Olympic regatta in style, winning the final race of the qualifying series, but missing out on medal race qualification by 8 points.

Their day started well with a 3rd place in race 1, but came unstuck in the second race when a 17th place put paid to their chances of medal race qualification. As this resilient pair have shown, the way to combat disappointment is by working harder, sailing faster and sailing smarter, which they did to great effect, winning in a 10-knot southerly breeze by the relatively comfortable (in 49er terms) margin of 24 seconds.

NZL, GBR and ESP occupy the podium slots going into Monday's medal race. With only four points separating the top three, the stage is set for an epic contest.

The Irish had their disqualification case (from two races due to an overweight harness) reopened overnight but 'the decision of the original hearing stands'. The findings are downloadable below as a pdf file.

What might have been? The numbers suggest that if the Irish boat had not been disqualified in two races, they would have entered the medal race in 8th position. This would have been too far back to medal, some 26 points behind 3rd place, with a maximum gain of 18 points available.

Dickson and Waddilove will now be installed as one of the favourites for the 2024 Olympics, to be sailed in Marseille in just three years time. The lessons learnt here will stand to them, as will their speed and tactical nous.

Speaking afterwards, Dickson said: "I'm pretty proud of the way we sailed, it's really good to finish on a high with the last race, and pretty amazing that we got two race wins. We've learned a lot from these games and we're going to bring that forward to (Paris) 2024."

Waddilove added: "Overall, it was a very positive experience and we've learnt plenty from this Olympic experience that we can bring forward. My biggest takeaway from this week is that we were very much capable of competing against these guys that have done multiple Olympics and have medals and medals under their belts and there's no reason why we can't get to 2024 and be medal contenders."

Results and overall standings are here

Olympic debutants Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove from Howth and Skerries in County Dublin got their regatta off to a sensational start today winning the opening race with a nail-biting finish, holding off the GBR boat by mere centimetres on the line.

While the result is provisional the early season promise shown by the two Irish debutantes when they secured the Irish nomination in style in Lanzarote.

Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove secured a mid-line front row start with plenty of clear air to blast off their Olympic Regatta Photo: Sailing Energy

A good start in clear air laid the ground work and favouring the left side of the course they took the lead at the first mark and then had a ding-dong battle with GBR all the way to the finish.

After the race the pair were relieved to start their campaign strongly, emphasising the changing nature of the sport. “I feel thrilled,” said Waddilove after the race, “We can’t ask for a better start, but you have to remember that this is the very first race, and anything could change with eleven races to go, plus a medal race, hopefully!” Dickson added, “It was pretty close, but you only have to win by a few centimetres. We didn’t know crossing the line that we’d done it until we came in and our coach told us.”

Racing is now cancelled for the rest of today and will resume tomorrow.

Silhouetted in the Enoshima sunshine, there's no mistaking the Irish tricolour in the lead of Race One of the 49er fleet Photo: Sailing Energy

The 49er scoreboard says it all - Ireland in the lead in Tokyo in the first of a scheduled 12 races

Results are here

More on Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove here

Time was when the question of whether the 2020-Olympics-in-2021 should or should not be staged would have been described as the Elephant in the Room, suggesting the presence of an imponderable so large and unthinkable that the sanity-seeking majority of the global sporting population have continued determinedly along as though it is, of course, going to happen. The ponderous pachyderm, they've said, is a figment of people's imagination.

But a small but growing minority in sport are increasingly in agreement with the fact that an international super-spreader event like the Olympics simply has to be cancelled as the world still grapples with an ever-mutating virus.

That's the balance of attitudes within the gung-ho sporting community. But within the population at large, the situation is already very different, with 90% of the general population in host country Japan being against the idea of the Games going ahead in July – just two months and one week away, to be precise – while at the more specific level, at least 40 Japanese townships, which in previous Olympiad years had generously hosted national teams, have indicated that in July 2021, such teams will no longer be welcome.

A Spreader Event of Olympic proportions…..but even if the traditional Olympic Parade is not staged in the event of the games being held in Tokyo in July, can safe distancing be maintained in a country where vaccination levels are still very low.

The emergence of this and other gloom-inducing facts during the past week or so, such as a lowly 1% vaccination rate in Japan itself, have contributed to what appears to be a tipping point in opinion in top sporting circles. This is leading to the weary resignation of preparing for acceptance of the unthinkable – that the postponed 2020 Olympics will not happen in 2021, and thus is there any point of thinking about a third attempt at staging them in Japan in 2022, when the 2024 Paris Olympics are already thundering up the agenda?

The scenario is so unthinkable - so unreal and rumour-prone - that those of us on the outside can only grasp at straws in the wind as to how things are going in the real decision-making centres. And for long enough, as the majority of us clung to the hope that the Games would go ahead - albeit in very shrunken relatively spectator-less settings – each little indicator that suggested things were on track was hopefully added to our viewpoint.

But in doing so, we were ignoring the sheer vastness, the extremely spread-out nature, and the very lengthy time-span of the modern Olympics. Even in the most normal of times, the potential for some section of the games to come off the rails is ever-present. So heaven alone knows what twists of disease and other trouble might unravel in the extreme heat of 2021 Tokyo in high summer, when hysteria can run amok.

When Ireland first sailed in a Japanese Olympics in 1964, the racing was staged in October when the intense summer heat had eased. This year's regatta is planned here at Enoshima in July, a bit cooler than the main centre of Tokyo nearby, but still making a period of acclimatisation for Irish sailors highly desirable.

The two factors that seemed to put us through the tipping point this past week have been the Japanese townships' declining of the opportunity to host teams – for that was something very specific as opposed to the vagueness of a national opinion poll – and the outcome of an announcement last week, that this week would be seeing all national teams receiving their first jab of the Pfizer vaccine if they hadn't already got it, or were on some other vaccination.

The Pfizer seems to have emerged as the Gold Standard, as it provides 95% immunity whereas some of the "workhorse" vaxes, while still effective, give significantly less protection. But anecdotal evidence from personal experiences suggests that the two-part Pfizer super-jab leaves you in no doubt whatever that your body has been put through quite a major biochemical experience.

There's a four week gap between the two Pfizer injections, and a full return to feelings of normality shouldn't really be expected until about a fortnight after the second jab, though the latest research suggests that you'll have achieved virtually full immunity one week after Jab Two.

Full immunity and a feeling of general well-being are two very different psycho-physical states, and thus it's realistic to think that an Olympic athlete receiving the full Pfizer treatment would need to have a clear eight week period after the first jab, before they could hope to return to that very finely-tuned condition which is optimal performance preparedness, and has more physical and mental components than you'd think possible.

Thus when the announcement came last week that agreement had been reached for all un-vaccinated Olympians to begin the Pfizer course this week, with the response coming that Olympic medical teams were ready and able for the administration, it gave us small grounds for added optimism. For this proposed schedule was just within the time-frame for the full post-vaccination recovery of the athletes by the time the Games began to take shape.

Team Dickson/Waddilove performing at peak. To achieve this level of fitness, an athlete would need to be as far post-vaccine as possible.  

But so far this week we've not been able to confirm any evidence at all that the widely-welcomed vaccination programme for the Olympians has gone ahead, and that apparent non-event - in addition to the Japanese townships' "Not Welcome" announcements - suggest we're in a domino-effect continuum, at the end of which we'll find the cancellation of the 2021 Olympics.

That said, much of the athletic preparation towards the postponed Games has been done under the radar, and it could well be that it's official Olympic management policy not to reveal that a vaccination programme is under way at the moment until it is successfully completed, for fear of arousing some unpleasant protests from career begrudgers about the Olympians receiving elite treatment when the world is crying out for vaccination.

Most reasonable folk would strongly support the view that Olympic athletes – a very tiny minority – have done so much to inspire the rest of us, cheering us up generally through two winters of gloom, that they should as a matter of course have been among the primary groups for vaccination.

For sure, the real heroes deserving immediate vaccination have been the frontline health workers. But it's almost impossible to over-estimate the psychological benefits which those able to continue successfully with their sport have gifted to the rest of us. And while the unique nature of our sport has meant that quite a bit of in-Ireland sailing has been possible in pandemic gaps, it is the Irish sailing breakthroughs at a restricted international level that have been the brightest lights in the general gloom.

It was as recently as mid-March that the Afloat.ie Editorial Team were having a conversation with renowned coach Tytus Konarzewski about the chances of the "Fingal Flyers" 49er team – Rob Dickson of Howth and Sam Waddilove of Skerries - making it past the final stages of Olympic selection – the last chance saloon - at Lanzarote at the end of the month.

The hugely experienced Konarzewski has seen and done it all, and comfortably takes the long view. When he started coaching with Dickson & Waddilove, it was with the long count-down to the 2024 Olympics in mind. But didn't the boys go and spoil it all by winning the U23 49er Worlds at Marseille in September 2018?

This not only made them the Afloat.ie Sailors of the Year 2018, but also saw them yanked by the powers-that-be out of their buildup programme towards 2024, and pushed instead into the main road towards Tokyo 2020, while the highly-regarded Konarzewski was let go.

The Sage of Successful Sailing – renowned coach Tytus Konarzewski in thoughtful observational mode on Dublin Bay. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O'Brien  

It was an arguably unhealthy development in terms of campaign planning, but where others then came to see the postponement of the 2020 Olympics as a problem in the latter stages of securing the 49er slot in 2021, Dickson & Waddilove saw it as an opportunity to up their game, and as the final selection races came over the horizon, they were in a new place in terms of performance and potential.

Nevertheless, in that mid-March conversation with the great Tytus, there was still a huge element of the "what ifs" about the permutations which could make the breakthrough possible. And in the actual event when the pressure was palpable, the burden on the two young sailors was inescapable. Yet they managed it with the medal race to spare. And with the pressure off, their carefree performance of brilliance in the final race to leave so many top sailors behind them simply adds to our hopes that the 2021 Sailing Olympics at Enoshima will somehow take place.

The Fingal Flyers qualify for the Olympics – Sam Waddilove of Skerries and Rob Dickson of Howth in Lanzarote, with Rob wearing his lucky hat which reminded everyone of………

…..the sailing headgear which was the trademark of his famous grandfather Roy Dickson, seen here at the helm of his Corby 40 Cracklin Rosie at the start of the 1997 Fastnet Race. Photo: W M Nixon

Not least of the pleasures in their success in Lanzarote was that Rob Dickson took part in a post-race interview in his new "lucky hat", which fondly reminded all those who knew of it of the similar hat which was the trademark headgear of his legendary sailing grandfather, the late Roy Dickson.

This in turn reminds us that at its best, Irish sailing is just one great big family affair, even if it often involves putting an extremely broad meaning on what "family" signifies. But whatever it is, it's good. And while we hope very dearly indeed that our reading of the rules about the staging or not of the 2021 version of the 2020 Olympics proves to be wrong, should it be right we can only point to the next suitable date as being 24th July 2022.

Two Irish Tokyo rivals both now in the hunt for one of the final European Olympic berths have resumed their battle after COVID at a scaled-down Kiel Week Regatta 2020, in northern Germany this week.

With two races left to sail its Howth and Skerries duo Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove that lead Irish hopes in 15th in the 52-boat fleet with two final races left to sail today. The pair, who also recorded the top Irish result at the 2020 World Championships in Australia in February, are in the top 30% of the fleet and as such it makes a welcome return to the race track, except for a UFD penalty in yesterday's final race of the day.

The Belfast and Cork combination of double Olympian Ryan Seaton and Seafra Guilfoyle will have probably been looking for more out of the week on the Baltic than their current 32nd position in the international fleet.

Both the 49er teams will head to Austria for the 49er European Championships, from 28 Sept – 4 October on Lake Attersee, a notoriously tricky venue.

As Afloat reported previously Irish campaigns chasing last places in the 49er, Laser and Finn classes were in turmoil in Spring when COVID-19 hit key final European qualifications in Italy and Spain, ultimately postponing the Games itself.

Ireland is competing with Belgium, Sweden and Italy for the one remaining European place. Form at the 2020 Worlds suggests that Irish sailors would be favourites for the place having finished ahead of the other three candidates but the final selection system has yet to be confirmed.