On shore, Hyères seems like the most gentle of venues. Late April, bright blue sky, and the promenade of this pretty little place in the South of France seems like the most harmless of settings. It’s as if butter wouldn’t melt in Hyères’ mouth.
But anyone with previous experience of racing at Hyères knows the story can be very different out on the water. You can be drifting along in almost zero breeze and the next moment out of nowhere, you might be struck by a gale-force gust. You can go for days on end with barely enough wind to get the boat moving, and then along come three days of back-to-back Mistral. The Mistral is the deceptively beautiful name given to the mountain wind that blows from the north into the Gulf of Lion. While you’re idling in one of the sun-drenched cafés along the waterfront by the marina, you have no idea what’s going on a few metres above you. That’s because you’re sitting in the lee of the strong wind blowing over the tops of the buildings. Head out on to the water on a Mistral day, and it’s a different story. The sun might still be shining, but that icy mountain breeze will take your breath away if you’re not properly dressed for it.
As Forrest Gump might have put it: “Hyères is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” The sailors about to compete at the Sailing World Cup event next week in the South of France will know that they have to be ready for anything. Ready for a frustrating drifter. Ready for a nerve-jangling day of survival.
Some classes deal with the extremes better than others. For the RS:X windsurfers, they revel in the strong wind and they can still wind-whack their way around the course in a light breeze. The ones that will be most concerned about big breeze will be the Nacra 17 foiling catamarans. Pitchpole one of these little twin-pronged monsters and you could be in for a serious injury. Then again, the sailors are young and they’re fearless. They’ll do whatever it takes. But hang on! What about Santiago Lange, the legendary Argentinean? He’s no spring chicken. When he defied all the odds to beat cancer and then a year later beat all his rivals at Rio 2016 to win Olympic gold at the age of 54, most of us thought what an amazing end to an incredible sailing career. The Star Sailors League competitor has won three Olympic medals, a gold and two bronze, and has been a key player in a number of America’s Cup campaigns. Surely he wouldn’t be coming back for more....
Well Santi IS back, along with his gold medal winning crew Cecilia Carranza. The Argentine duo have already showed they’re not scared of their foiling beast, at least not as scared as their fellow competitors. At the Sailing World Cup event in Miami at the start of the year, Lange and Carranza were well back in the Medal Race. It was pretty breezy, and most of the fleet were nursing their way down towards the finish, looking a bit tentative and nervous through the gybes and not fully ‘sending it’ on the foils. Lange saw his opportunity, threw caution to the wind and accelerated from 8th to 3rd across the line, elevating himself from also-ran to silver medal winner behind the victorious young Australian crew of Jason Waterhouse and Lisa Darmanin, the very team that he pipped for Olympic gold two years earlier.
Another one to watch is Great Britain’s Ben Saxton who with Katie Dabson won the Nacra 17 World Championships last season. Saxton has proven himself a fast learner, whatever kind of sailing he turns his hand to, as he showed when he finished 8th as a VIP invitee at last December’s Star Sailor’s League Finals in Nassau. Although he’d never raced a Star before, teamed up with former World Champion Steve Mitchell in the front of the boat he managed to win the pin end of one of the races against all the big guns from the Star class. Breathing down his neck were the most successful crew of the SSL format, the USA’s Mark Mendelblatt and Brian Fatih. “We were one boat length ahead for the whole race,” says Saxton. “On the second beat we only crossed ahead of Mark and Brian by two metres – it was awesomely close racing. Then on the last run we had the Poles, Paul Goodison and Mark/Brian alongside of us and it could have gone any way.” But Saxton held his nerve and won that race. Whatever kind of racing he does, no matter how different it appears from his ‘day job’ in the Nacra, he sees it all as relevant experience. Saxton, sailing in Hyères with stand-in crew Nicola Boniface, believes in a diverse approach to sailing rather than specialising in one form of racing.
Contrary to Saxton’s approach, fellow Briton Ed Wright continues to prove that long experience in the Finn - to the exclusion of almost any other kind of sailing - can still be very effective. At an age when most Olympic competitors (Santi excluded) have hung up their hiking boots, the 40-year-old Wright won the European Championships a few weeks back in Cadiz. But his nemesis, indeed the nemesis of the whole Finn fleet, wasn’t there. Giles Scott was absent on duty for his main employer, the America’s Cup team Land Rover BAR. Just as his boss, Sir Ben Ainslie, dominated the Men’s Heavyweight Dinghy in his day, Scott is proving every bit as invincible in the Finn. The reigning Olympic Champion has wiped the floor in both events that he’s competed in this year, Sailing World Cup Miami and the Princess Sofia Trophy in Palma a few weeks ago. So who will threaten Scott this time around? Wright, the reigning European Champion? Max Salminen, the reigning World Champion from Sweden, [as well as the 2012 Olympic Champion in the Star class with Freddie Loof]? Or perhaps Turkey’s Alican Kaynar, who won in Hyères a year ago.
It looked like another reigning Olympic Champion, Tom Burton, had put down a strong marker for his Tokyo 2020 campaign when he won the Men’s Lasers in Miami back in January. But his fellow Australian, Matt Wearn, reminded Burton that getting selected for the Games will be no easy task after Wearn dominated the Princess Sofia Trophy a few weeks ago. The reigning World Champion Pavlos Kontides won in Hyères 12 months ago, so he’ll be one to watch, along with many, many others including Germany’s Philipp Buhl and Britain’s double World Champion Nick Thompson. While Scott should be a shoo-in for the Finn, the Laser is always hard to predict, especially at an unpredictable venue like this one.
Don’t be fooled by the blue skies and picture postcard setting; Hyères is one of the toughest venues on the Olympic circuit, and the stars of the sailing world will have to be at their physically and mentally most resilient if they’re to seize victory in the South of France next weekend.
Andy Rice, SailingIntelligence.com
SSL Press Officer since 2015