How to Win in 50 Words
The title of this article seeks to outline a shortlist of steps to succeed. Before I get into that let me clear the air: I didn’t win a world championship or coach the winning team this summer. Congrats to those sailors and the support team behind them. This summer I coached sailors at two world championships while I witnessed the behavior, attitudes, and performance of those at the top. There are consistent trends of those who win. I believe these truths to be self-evident and everlasting.
About 29er Open Worlds:
The racing was extremely difficult. And to be expected at a World Championship. Leading up to the event, we spent a lot of time training for wind, chop and swell, and to my eye our teams were fast. I mean, really fast. When the 29ers are planing our squad rips. Here’s the thing, out of the 6 days of competition, only two races in the entire series were in planing conditions.
For the lion's share of the event the boats were locked into displacement mode, digging through the water at a slow crawl. Not the electric skiff racing we’re used to, but more of the tactical tacking duels and tight lane racing we see in most dinghy fleets like the optimist class.
As it turns out, summertime in the Mediterranean brings predictably mild weather to the north eastern region of Spain. A local sailor told me that we were “very lucky to have such nice wind in the summer, as it’s typically not this good.” Yikes, I thought.
Stable is how I would describe the wind. If the puffs were 5 knots, the lulls were 4. And the wind would oscillate within a 15 degree window every three minutes with the predictable swivel of a desk top fan. Back and forth.
Why is this important? Because in order to succeed in a 40 boat fleet, you need to make sure to execute on mission critical steps. To miss the mark on any of these meant the fleet would collapse on top of you eating up every knot of the minimal breeze.
While our teams were fast, in a different setting (waves and winds above 11 knots), in the conditions we faced all the boats were limited to the same speed of displacement. The congestion of the fleet, combined with the stability of the breeze, meant that boats who were not front row had little hope of recovering. It would be as if you tripped, then tied your shoe laces at the beginning of a 40 yard dash. The other runners would be well ahead of you by the time you made it to your feet.
Sounds like a light air sailboat race, right. That’s what it was.
And the skill level of the 29er fleet at the moment is at an all time high. Two hundred and forty two boats competed in this World Championships. The largest ever in the history of the class. It was incredible to hear so many languages, styles of sailing, and behavior in the boat park.
The challenge was great. And expectations were high. For more than half of the US teams at the event, it was their first Worlds. All had high hopes. It can not be understated how much pressure a teen athlete puts her or himself under to perform their best at an event of this level. Everyone there was hungry to prove themselves. Everyone wants to perform, and the reality is that no one rises to the peak of their personal potential, but rather settles to the level of their training and preparation.
“The Olympics isn’t every four years. The Olympics is every day of the year,” is a popular quote to motivate the daily dedication of the world’s elite athletes.
Specific to this 2022 Worlds:
Light air racing in stable breeze puts a high priority on a few skills:
Escaping the start line
Owning your lane(s) upwind
Winning your side
Find clean air
To fail to execute in one of these three areas is extremely costly. To improve your proficiency in these areas requires focused time and repetition of “proper technique” in order to ingrain the mechanics, timing, and repeatability of these components. It takes time, a lot of time. A tedious and often boring amount of time. It takes so much time, your teammates will be switched off and thinking about something else, while you continue to practice repetition after repetition until it’s correct.
Now, here’s the thing. Everyone’s experience is different. And over my years of coaching I’ve come to appreciate more and more that there are multiple paths to success. So rather than specifically nail down on details, I’ve learned to find the fundamental principles that are related to all athletes for each individual to work in their own way towards a common goal.
Here are a few of my key takeaways from the worlds; I call it “how to win in 50 words:”
Eliminate Obstacles and focus on priorities : This is about committing to things that matter and will make the difference. If walking to the venue is too hot and dehydrates you, take an Uber. If you need to check the current on the starting line, do that rather than change your battens before the race. Every choice we take in life has an opportunity cost. Which is to say, to choose one thing is to choose not to do something else. So choose the things that matter. How do you know what matters or not? (answer below)
Track and Measure Your Own Progress: Start tracking your performance. Pay attention to the details and take notes on how you respond and perform in different situations. For example: can you think more clearly when you eat two bars, or three bars on the water? Does going to bed at 9pm rather than 11pm affect how moody you are in the morning? What do you do in the pre-start on those races you’ve had the best starts?
Set Higher Standards: I said it earlier, “we don’t rise to the level of our potential, we settle to the level of our training.” So train hard. And make the most of the extreme days. Days of extreme light air, and extremely heavy air. Become comfortable in very uncomfortable situations, because you are going to be in many of them, especially when it counts. And if you have experience in those tough spots you will be able to continue to perform when others have given up. And to be clear, this is not a path to happiness or inner peace. In fact, I think you have to be chronically critical of your own performance and relentlessly looking for ways to get better “a little bit here, a little bit there.” As Paul Cayard says, winning isn’t for everyone.
Plan to Fail and Rebuild Again: There’s a myth in sport that when an athlete achieves a certain level things become much easier. Part of that is true, tacking is less difficult in your third year of 29er sailing than your first year. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep practicing. Because the more skilled you become, the more specialized you become. So rather than trying to stay upright out of a tack, you’ll most likely be focusing on the position of the boom and mainsheet trim related to the boat’s bearing and heel. As you specialize, subjects become more complex, more nuanced. So plan for it to be confusing, plan to get it wrong and plan to learn from it. In fact, figure out how you learn best and try to do that every time.
Ignore the voice that says “you can’t”: The only thing you can’t do is give up. So when that voice in your head tells you your legs are tired, or it’s too hard, or you are an imposter. Ignore it. Talk back to it. Better yet, take action and override it by focusing on doing your job. Over time it will be a bad distant memory, and you’ll have a new voice in your head reminding you of what’s important. Orville Wright survived 8 terrible plane crashes developing the Wright Flyer, had he given up somewhere along the path he and his brother would never have changed the world with their plane.
Sacrifice: Opportunity cost, again. You can’t have it all. So if “winning” is what you want, or here I will say “ success” then you need to make a step by step plan in order to achieve that goal. No one walks from the bottom to the top of Mount Everest. In fact, you have to spend weeks acclimating to the altitude of “Base Camp” at 8,000 feet before even considering climbing up the mountain. And most people don’t even make it to the summit. In the context of sailing, or specifically the life of a teenage student-athletes, you will need to choose to practice or study over the hundreds of other family and social events you’ll be invited to. Whether it’s worth it is up to you. But one thing is true, those sailors at the top of the podium are the ones who have worked the hardest.
Surround Yourself with Winners: There’s a quote that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” You’ll definitely find some social science at work here, but to my eye the most successful people never take a break from being successful and leverage the power of positive peer pressure by spending time with other highly successful people. This is not advice to leave your friend group. But to take a moment to consider who is rubbing off on you. But osmosis can only go so far. So swallow your pride and ask those with more experience than you some questions to help you along.
Maintain a schedule, diet, routine: How you do what you do is just as important as what it is you are doing. This is to say, the quality of your work is what’s important. And the quote: “How you do anything is how you do everything” is about having a powerhouse mindset really applies here. To be a winner on the water, you also need to be one off the water. And in fact, in every aspect of your life.
Fanatic commitment to the things that matter: Some people will call you obsessed, but that’s just what lazy people call those dedicated to something than they are. How do you figure out “what matters?” There will be many clarifying moments during your sports journey. Typically when you are reconciling your own personal limitations. Use these moments to dissect and discover the “things that mattered” during your reflection. It’s like a scavenger hunt. Each clue will lead to the next one. And so on.
Give it your all: My favorite sports quote of all time is from runner Steve Prefontaine, “to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” Put another way, in the words of the stoic and insightful curmudgeon, Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec “Never half ass anything, if you’re going to do something, you’ve got to whole ass it.”
Execute: You are training to perform under pressure in the most challenging of circumstances. That is your goal. At the end of the day, when the starting flag goes down you need to be able to get off the line and perform to the best of your abilities. And after hours, months, years of practice it will come naturally to you.
Eliminate obstacles and focus on priorities.Track and measure your own progress. Set higher standards. Plan to fail and rebuild again. Ignore the voice that says “you can’t. Sacrifice. Surround yourself with winners. Maintain a schedule, diet, routine. Fanatic commitment to the things that matter. Give it your all. Execute.
There you go. Fifty words. Do what you will with them. Best of luck.
