The winter has been a traditional time to train and prepare for the coming racing season and the past 7 months have been no different. There were around 50 separate open and accessible race training events, or Academies, aimed at improving racing skills in a range of pathway classes since October 2021.
At least 15 different venues were used to deliver this training, with a huge thank you to all the volunteers at clubs and training centres that enabled access to safe race training facilities for the team of coaches across the different classes.
Performance Team training weekends took place at both Largs and Blairvadich, aimed at sailors progressing towards the British Sailing Team. This was not the only performance activity over the winter with Transition Training, Invitational Training and the Junior Championships in September and Winter Championships in December returning.
Overall it was extremely encouraging to be back to a full programme of activities after the previous disruption of the past two winters. As training returns this has also meant that competition has returned back to the previous Easter based, Youth Championships, that took place at Plas Heli, in Wales this year, and the Eric Twinname Junior Championships taking place at the end of April at Rutland SC.
Twelve Scots sailors attended the British Youth Sailing UK National Championships across three classes, the ILCA, 420 and 29er. The start of the week was dominated by lights airs, although the racing was close in all classes. While there was no podium results it was a great opportunity to build competitive experience ahead of this summer, with a number of sailors going on domestic and international events in their chosen classes.
Around the same time the senior sailors on the British Sailing Team also returned to competitive sailing as the first international Olympic regatta since Toyko took place in Palma, at the Trofeo Princesa Sophia. The three Scots on the team all posted solid results with Andy Brown winning his first World Cup event, Anna Burnett finishing 3rd with Jon Gimson in the Nacra 17 class and Islay Watson posting a top ten place to put her 2nd in the current IQ Foil world rankings.
Look out for upcoming RYA Scotland events including:
The BYS Youth and Juniors Championships on the 18th / 19th June
The Late Summer Champs on the 24th/25th of September
Find out more about Performance Sailing here.performance