The Italian Job, World Blind Match Racing Championships, bringing the gold back home
Team GB landed in Italy for the 2010 IFDS World Blind Match Racing championships after quite a stressful flight from Stanstead. The first day was taken up with registration and sight classification check ups, which in my case meant I had an Italian man waving two fingers in front of my face to make sure that my sight classification was definitely B2 and I was not Ben Ainslie!
Later that evening we had the opening ceremony which brought a lump to my throat as they raised the Union Flag and played the national anthem.
The first day’s racing started well with Lucy and I winning all our races. The second day of racing was under very testing conditions with wind of only 3 to 4 knots. This meant maximum concentration from Lucy on the helm to keep the boat moving in such light air and me making sure that the sails were trimmed right for the conditions and that the weight distribution was in the correct place to ensure that the boat was balanced right.
Finishing the round robin with an unbeaten record of five firsts put us straight into the semi-finals with the local Italian team who were marked as favourites to win the Championships. Lucy is a great helm and I am a confident and good all round crew but this was all new to us and we had not competed like this before with just us on the boat and doing all the tactics and getting around the course. We won the semis putting us in the finals against the favoured local Italian team to fight it out.
We started the finals knowing that we were either going to come second or first in our first Championships. We could at least manage to finish the job that Michael Caine as Charlie Croker in the Italian Job was never able to do!
We got a good start from the Italian favourites and by the time we got to the windward mark we had made good speed and distance and crossed the finish line with them a few good boat lengths behind us. They did try it on in the second race and the start was tight with us protesting about them not giving us room to sail our proper course. Again we had better boat speed and made it to the windward mark with lots of room between us. When we crossed the finish line for the last time and the hooter sounded the Italian team were quite a way behind.
I was so overwhelmed with success that I jumped for joy and almost fell out of the boat. It was so blooming brilliant to know that Lucy and I had done it and won the championships ourselves with no sighted help.
What followed that night was quite a bit of celebrating in the bars around Bogliaco and finishing up with a few Limoncellos in our favourite watering hole. I was finding it hard to say in Italian ‘another round of Limoncello please’ and the Italian for please is per favore and I made it sound like ‘park-my-fa-Ferrari!’
The prize giving and closing ceremony at Lake Garda was baking hot with little breeze to keep us cool. It was a proud moment to stand on the podium and for Lucy and I to get our gold medals and have the national anthem played.
The next Championships will be in Perth in Australia in March 2011. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the application for the International Paralympic Committee by IFDS (International Federation of Disabled Sailing) for the match racing to be part of the 2016 Paralympics. It would be fantastic for blind sailing racing to have the recognition it deserves and perhaps a bit of funding to get us there too!
Look out Australia as the Brits are coming panning for gold to bring back to Blighty!
About Toby
Toby Davey was born with retinopophy of prematurity some 40 years ago and is registered blind.
Read Toby's full profile |
List all Toby's posts
Toby's RSS feed |
Toby's Twitter account
Comments
-
Hey congratulations Toby and the Team you guys rock. . . . Aussies battle begins in 2011 and I will support Toby and GBR.
Posted by Altamash, 19 August 2010 (1 year ago)
