Paul Goodison’s victory at the Moth World Championships in Bermuda shows the British sailor - even at the ripe old age of 40 - just keeps getting better and better.
The win in Bermuda completes a hat trick of Moth Worlds victories that started in Japan in 2016 in a fleet that lacked some of the big names who were otherwise engaged in the build-up to the 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda. On that occasion Goody prevailed in a three-way battle with two other Brits, Olympic campaigner Chris Rashley and Volvo Ocean Race veteran Rob Greenhalgh.
If Japan seemed like a ‘soft’ win, then the Garda Worlds in 2017 was an opportunity for Goodison to test his mettle against the very best, with all the big names converging on the stunning Italian lake for a championship that attracted 191 entries. Many of the big guns had just completed their America’s Cup campaigns in Bermuda only a few weeks earlier, including Artemis Racing’s Outteridge and Ian ‘Goobs’ Jensen from Australia, Oracle Team USA’s tactician Tom Slingsby (also from Australia), and the Cup-winning helmsman of Emirates Team New Zealand himself, the irrepressible Kiwi talent Pete Burling.
No one could touch Goodison for speed or sheer skill in the Moth. Burling was runner-up, but with 40 points to the winner’s tally of 20. His fellow colleague at Artemis, the Italian three-time Olympian Francesco Bruni, finished a very respectable 11th overall at the 2017 Worlds yet he says: “Goody was in a league of his own. I’d get good starts every day, Goody not so much. But he was about 1 knot faster upwind. I remember one race where I was in the front bunch and he sailed right up behind me, cracked off to leeward, sailed through my bad air and out the other side. He ended up leaving me in his bad air! Incredible.”
Let’s not forget that Goody has been a good sailor for some time. He dominated the Laser fleet at Beijing 2008 to claim Olympic gold and has won a number of other major championships in tough sportsboat fleets like the Melges 32. Now his third successive victory marks him out as one of the all-time greats in the ultra-competitive Moth fleet, widely acknowledged as the most competitive dinghy class outside of the Olympic circus.
His victory in Lake Garda last year made Goodison an obvious candidate for a VIP invite to the Star Sailors League Finals in the Bahamas at the end of 2017. “I love the Star from the memories of seeing it on the Olympic circuit, especially my old mates [Iain] Percy and Bart [the late Andrew Simpson]. I didn’t want to go to the Finals and embarrass myself, so I spoke to Robert Scheidt about going and he was super-excited and had lots of energy.” Scheidt organised some training at Lake Garda with some other Star sailors including German crew Frithjof Kleen, who would go on to become Goodison’s crew at the Finals. “After a couple of phone calls I signed up for everything without really realising what I'd let myself in for, and along with Loick Peyron we ended up doing three really intensive days of training and short races at Garda. Not exactly an Olympic campaign, but definitely worth it.”
Worth it? It certainly was, as Goodison and Kleen fought their way through to the four-boat Final in Nassau; a chance of winning gold, silver, bronze - or wood. “Before the start I told Frithjof I definitely wanted the right-hand side, so I lined myself up for that near the committee boat. Now Frithjof had given me a golden rule not to let the boom out more than the leeward quarter, as he reckoned I wasn't strong enough to pull it back in fast enough! So we set up before the start and we were in a really nice spot. But then Xavier Rohart, who's much bigger, stronger than me, got the hook on me and started chasing from behind, so foolishly I didn’t manage to keep to my game plan. I released the mainsheet more than I wanted to and we ended up being a bit slow off the line.”
However, with the other three boats racing up the left-hand side of the track, Goodison’s poor start still gave him the freedom to get out to the right, just as he’d wanted to originally. When a wind shift came in, the British/German crew moved ahead. They held the lead until the final run when Scheidt brought out some of his legendary downwind speed and briefly stole the lead. But Goodison caught another wave and surfed to victory just 1 second ahead of his Brazilian rival.
In winning the Star Sailors League Finals at his first attempt, the Briton proved just how versatile a sailor he can be in a range of boats. Like Scheidt, the one thing that Goodison has always had is great downwind speed. He was also very fast downwind at the Moth Worlds in Bermuda, although it is not just down to sailing talent but to a close working relationship with Lennon Sails and CST Masts to get the rig working well both upwind and downwind in a range of wind strengths.
Just like the best go-kart drivers go on to make the best Formula One drivers, so fast Moth sailors have been proven to be the fastest helmsmen of the new breed of foiling multihulls such as we saw in the last couple of America’s Cups. Now the new AC75 monohull concept looks like an oversized Moth on steroids, so the skills of a world-beating Moth sailor are going to be more in demand than ever.
But what about that other thing that he’s proved to be quite good at, beating the world’s best Star sailors at their own game? Will he be back to defend his SSL title in the Bahamas this winter? “I’d love to, it’s a fantastic event, great people,” smiles Goody. “But I don’t know yet. It depends if my new employer gives me the time off.”
By Andy Rice - Sailing Intelligence
SSL Press Officer since 2015