Paralympics: Sailors just want to get on with it

By GREG ANSLEY

SYDNEY - Out on Sydney Harbour, Terry Valder says, there is no local advantage.

Valleys and built-up ridges fire wind gusts in sudden changes of direction, impossible to predict no matter how often sailors slice through its waters.

As the New Zealand Paralympics sailing team tack against the backdrop of the Harbour Bridge, yet another veer in the eight-knot breeze gives force to Valder's assessment.

For a team named only six months ago, who had sailed together only five times before arriving in Sydney for the Games, and who had never previously sailed the Sonar class selected for the Paralympics, this is the good news.

The Australians are out in strength again, of course, although there are only three Sonars in their country and the New Zealanders have chartered one of them for their races.

And the heavies of Sonar racing, the Americans and the Europeans, are there not only with years of experience in one of the most popular Northern Hemisphere classes, but also with daunting displays of equipment that demonstrate the level of funding flowing to them.

Valder, the New Zealand team's sailing coach, simply shrugs and gets on with the job.

So do the team.

"I think we're well on track," said crewman Garth Reynolds, a member of the gold medal-winning team at last year's world sailing regatta in Miami, Florida.

"At this stage we're pretty happy with where we are."

Marty Clarke, a Paralympic skier, one-time national kneeboarding champion and runner-up in the national marathon canoeing championships in addition to being a Paralympic sailor, said the team were only really starting to test their potential for the Games regatta, which starts tomorrow. "We haven't had a good look [at the competition] because for the first two days here we had a bit of trouble with gear breakages," he said.

"That was a bit frustrating, but we've got over that I think, so now we can start looking at other boats."

Helmsman Phil Edwards reckons there is no point in knowing what the others are doing.

"We're at the stage where we need to concentrate on the process rather than racing off the other crews," he said. "We need to make the boat go as fast as we can, and that's taking time."

Valder agrees.

"The real problem with lining up with other boats you're not officially training with is that you don't know when they're giving you an honest impression of what's happening," he said.

"Yesterday we went out and gave the Japanese a hiding but personally I wouldn't make anything out of that.

"Unless you've got a training partner you're not going to learn too much."

This is real No 8 baling wire stuff.

Before selection Reynolds had known Valder, and Clarke knew fourth man Chris Wood from skiing.

None of the crew had ever been in the water together, and none had sailed a Sonar. There are simply none in New Zealand.

The best they could manage were J24s, similar in size but little else, arranged through Maurice Cross, at Bucklands Beach in Auckland.

Pulling the crew together for training was a nightmare: Valder and Wood are from Auckland, Reynolds from Whangarei, Clarke from Nelson and Edwards from Dunedin.

They managed four three-day sessions in New Zealand, and one five-day trip to Sydney after the charter of the Sonar was arranged, before arriving last week for the Games.

Their disabilities added new dimensions to the job.

Reynolds is blind, Clarke has one leg amputated, Edwards is a paraplegic, and Wood has one leg amputated above the knee.

Reynolds: "It was bloody hard."

Clarke: "We had to learn a whole new vocabulary."

"It was," said Reynolds, "a sharp learning curve. As you can well imagine, the dynamics of so many disabilities getting together is quite mind-boggling for us - never mind other people.

"The dynamics are amazing, and that takes time."

The selection of the unfamiliar Sonar as the Paralympic class, the crew say, is no real problem.

They say it handles well, and has a large open cockpit suited to disability sailing.

"The biggest problem is not what we can do on the boat - it's the lack of experience of fleet racing," Valder said.

"The boat handling is good, the boat's good."

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