ANTIGUANICE YACHTING INSIDER NEWSLETTER

Technical Sailing Report - Athlete Rhone Kirby competed in the Men’s Byte C II Class at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China last August.  The team arrived on the 12th of August and on the 13th of August Rhone and coach Karl James went down to Jinniu Lake, approximately two hours away from the Olympic village.  Rhone received his boat and registered it at which time an insurance issue came up which fortunately was solved just hours before the event started.

For the next 12 days, between practicing and racing, Rhone and Karl put in 12 hours a day at Jinniu Lake.  In the practice race Rhone had an excellent result finishing in 7th place which boosted his confidence level for the actual race.

At the start of his first official race he was leading.  However, he received a penalty and was required to do two turns which is different from other regattas that often only require one turn.  He also received a second penalty for not completing the two turns, which he was unable to discard.  Rhone was concerned after the second penalty that if he received another penalty he would have been thrown out of the event.

However, after that incident he was able to bounce back mentally where he obtained two top 10 results. Following two excellent finishes - a 9th and 7th place –three days of racing were cancelled due to a lack of wind which didn’t allow enough time for Rhone to catch up in the overall standings.  His final finishing place was 24th overall out of the 30 competitors that took part in the event.

Rhone has been a great ambassador for his country, Antigua Yacht Club, his parents and also his coach – Karl James.  We are all exceptionally proud of Rhone’s accomplishments – it’s not every youth sailor who earns a place to participate in the Youth Olympic Games!

Full results of the 2014 Youth Olympic Games can be viewed here.

Article compliments of Karl James, as edited by the Editor.