Yachting: Sponsorship gold boosts title hopes

Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie struggled to find sponsors despite winning Olympic gold three years ago. Photo / Doug Sherring

The way Polly Powrie tells the story, it sounds like something out of a Flintstones episode.

Two Olympic gold medallists crammed into a VW Polo, struggling to tow their much bigger boat up and over the hills north of Auckland. It's a scene that's hard to imagine but, until two years ago, was reality for Powrie and Jo Aleh.

They didn't have any sponsored transport and depended on the (limited) horsepower of Powrie's car to get their boat to the manufacturer in Silverdale or tow it around New Zealand.

"It probably looked funny," laughs Powrie. "The boat was a lot bigger than the car and it was a bit of a struggle. It almost needed a shove to get over the peak.

"There are some big hills going up there. I'd be tucked in behind the trucks trying to get a wind shadow."

That story encapsulates the difficult journey of Aleh and Powrie, who will compete this week at the 470 world championships in Israel.

Olympic sports always require high levels of sacrifice, lacking the profile of more mainstream sports. But topping the Olympic podium is usually a golden ticket. It's supposed to open corporate doors but that didn't happen for Team Jolly.

"Even after London, we didn't really have any sponsors," says Aleh. "We got home and [the other medallists] were driving around in new cars. People would ask us, 'Where are yours?'"

For a time, Aleh wondered about the "opportunity cost" of a gold medal. The pair were well funded by Yachting New Zealand and High Performance Sport NZ but it still left significant shortfalls.

The duo, determined to avoid any half measures, poured every cent they had into preparing in the years before London. The achievement - and journey - had been fabulous but Aleh was still living at home, on a tight budget with credit cards tipped to the maximum.

"Getting to London was all quite simple," says Powrie. "We were young, we wanted to win a gold medal and we put everything into it. We made up the shortfalls because we wanted to do it. But when I thought about Rio, I worried about the opportunity cost.

"What if you do it again and don't get a medal? Or you do but is it worth the four years? You look at your friends who have kids, houses and great jobs and you're like, 'well, I've got a lot of boats'. It was about trying to make sure we didn't just end up with the experiences and some debt."

Around that time fate intervened. At a function in Christchurch in late 2012, the duo met Christchurch company director Paul Lloyd.

"I asked them about sponsorship," says Lloyd. "They didn't have any and I remember Jo saying, 'Why would anyone want to sponsor us?' I was stunned."

Lloyd, who runs Apollo Projects and has a large network of contacts in the construction industry, came on board. He got several other companies involved, at different tiers, aiming to smooth the path for the Olympians.

"They had been living off their savings and their parents, scraping around," says Lloyd. "We didn't want them to have any debt when they finished sailing, and not to make [campaign] decisions based on money."

The extra support allowed the pair to move out of home, ensured they both had leased cars, as well as cash for the extra costs associated with their sport.

"It has made Rio an achievable goal," says Powrie. "Without that, it would be questionable if we could do it."

"It takes a lot off your plate. You don't have to worry so much," says Aleh. "I know someone will fix the car if something goes wrong, I can keep my flat when I am away sailing. Last time, we didn't do that much racing, didn't go overseas much. We couldn't really afford it."

There are still challenges, mostly logistical. Competing takes them across the globe - Aleh estimates they have spent the equivalent of 25 days in planes already this year - as well as some marathon road journeys in Europe.

"Last year, we competed in Holland, then drove to the south of Italy for another regatta," says Powrie. "Then we returned to Holland, then back to southern Italy, then over to France."

For this campaign, Team Jolly maintain boats in New Zealand, Europe and Rio, with Brazil offering particular headaches.

"Recently we had to ship our boat from Rio to Argentina," says Powrie. "But it would have been cheaper to send it from Barcelona to Argentina. And this year, there was a strike that meant it was stuck on the wharf for a few weeks."

The 470 world championships, which start tomorrow, mark a return to racing for the pair after a brief spell away from boats. Powrie attended a family wedding in San Francisco and did some mountainbiking in Rotorua, while Aleh took on a 220km stand-up paddleboard race in Holland - and finished second.

"I couldn't just go and sit on the beach for a week," she says. "I'd get completely bored. But on the second day [of five] I thought, 'What the hell am I doing?' I finished second woman overall but got some decent blisters."

This week's event will be particularly special for Aleh, whose mother is Israeli.

"I have been to Israel lots of times but I have never sailed in Haifa or Israel before. It is beautiful sailing there, so warm, 29 degree water and wind every day. Amazing."