A top eight finish at the Tornado Worlds 2006 was their target, but both Zwitserleven Sailing teams did not succeed on the Argentinean Rio del Plata. After ten years of intensively co-operation on the water and ashore, Mitch Booth and Herbert Dercksen split up this summer. They both found a new mate and applied for the same title sponsorship. That is how the Zwitserleven Sailing Plan, the first commercial Olympic Sailing Team in the Netherlands, was born. Mitch Booth and Pim Nieuwenhuis as well as Mischa Heemskerk and Herbert Dercksen are financially supported until the end of the year 2006. Zwitserleven set them a challenging goal: the best top eight result at the Tornado Worlds would be awarded with a full sponsorship until the Olympic Games of Beijing in 2008.

But the reality caused a different scenario… none of them made it to the top eight. Booth and Nieuwenhuis finished fourteenth, which was the best Dutch result. Heemskerk and Dercksen ended up in 26th position. Of course the Dutch media focussed on the battle between the previous team-mates and on them not making it to the first eight. But the other reality is that the international Tornado top has an extremely high level and most of the crews have been sailing together for years. The Zwitserleven Teams had only a month of training and some racing. Booth and Nieuwenhuis won the Aruba Heineken Catamaran Regatta and got a fourth at the South American Tornado Championships. They started the Worlds in fifth position, but as the wind dropped to an unstable breeze, they could not keep up with the close competition. You simply need more practise for adjusting well to the different wind ranges. After two bad results on Saturday, Booth and Nieuwenhuis managed to climb two places on the leader board in the final race on Sunday. In theory, a fourteenth position is not good enough, but considering the strong competition, the difficult conditions and the short time of preparation, it is a promising start of a new Olympic campaign. Zwitserleven might continue sponsoring Booth and Nieuwenhuis and give them a second chance to proof their quality as an Olympic duo at the Tornado Worlds 2007. Nevertheless, this will first be discussed with the Royal Netherlands Yachting Union.

Local heroes
As the wind picked up late on Sunday December 10th, only one out of two scheduled races was sailed. That made the Australians Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby World Champion 2006 prior to the start. They did a great job with only top six results. The battle for silver was full on though. The locals Lange/Espinola and the Austrians Hagara/Steinacher aimed for this colour, but the Argentines pleased the enormous crowd by winning this final race. It was awesome how all the people cheered for their heroes. Not only for the medallists, but also for the Argentinean team that crossed the finish line in very last position. This is what sports is about. Thank you Argentina for showing us.

I was on location to report on the performances of Zwitserleven Sailing Team Booth/Nieuwenhuis. In addition, I worked for Zeilen, a Dutch monthly sailing magazine, and wrote three updates for their website. This month, I will hand in an article for their February issue. Dinghy Sailing Magazine from the UK received a selection of my images, of which they might publish some.

My next event will be the Optimist Worlds in Uruguay at the beginning of January 2007. If you are interested in images or reports, please contact me.

 

14 December 2006