- Sport
- Sailing
- Tokyo Olympics
This was published 4 years ago
Tweddell rides Australia's ruthless Olympic sailing selection process
Oliver Tweddell and Jake Lilley have been training together for years but they're also one another's fiercest rivals.
The Finn class sailors are ranked second and first in Australia respectively, but come June 2020 only one of them will be selected to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Five or sometimes six times a week they train together in the knowledge that only one of them can reach their goal. Lilley won out after years of training leading into the Rio Olympics in 2016, but Tweddell hopes 2020 will be his turn.
“It’s not like athletics unfortunately where if you’re international standard you can go and race at the Olympics," Tweddell said.
"Sailing is cut throat. We keep it professional. I keep to myself and he keeps to himself. We have done a very good job this time around of training together for three years, keeping it intense but also not trying to kill each other. We have a good professional training group together with three other Aussie boys too.
Oliver Tweddell narrowly missed out on the Rio Olympics but is hoping to represent Australia in Finn class sailing at Tokyo 2020. Credit: Jeff Crow
“The theory is if we push each other hard enough ideally the person that goes will be good enough to go and get a medal. But it's a very tricky situation."
Tweddell, 29, has missed almost 12 months due to a broken wrist and bone necrosis. He needed a bone graft from his hip to repair it.
His first event back will be the week-long 2019 Finn Gold Cup, the world championships for Finn sailing, to be held out of the Royal Brighton Yacht Club in Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay from Monday.
This regatta, and a few others leading into Tokyo 2020, will be used as selection events for the Olympics.
“We aren’t allowed to say what is and isn’t officially a selection event but suffice to say world championships would be quite important," Tweddell said.
"It’s so other countries can’t interfere in selection.
“In our sport it is very easy to influence other boats on the water. Slow them down, for example, other countries can influence it if they wanted to. Nations tend not to announce what selection events they have used because of that."
Finn class sailing is defined as one person sailing in a heavy dinghy with a single mast and sail.
Overall, sailing has been one of Australia’s Olympic strengths of late, generating six gold medals and three silver since the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Lilley came eighth in Finn class at Rio, while Australia’s only medal in that class came via America's Cup-winning skipper John Bertrand in Montreal 1976, claiming bronze.
The English-born Tweddell said a lot of Finn sailors used to play rugby, including him, such is the size, strength and stamina needed for the class.
"You need to be around the right weight which is from 94 kilograms up to 105 kilograms," he said. "You need to be a big boy, quite fit and strong with that as well. The boys out here are all tall and skinny or shorter and thicker built.
“But also you need to make decisions under pressure and under fatigue. Our sport is a very decision-based sport so once you get toward the front of the fleet speed is pretty similar it just comes down to who makes the better choices under pressure and fatigue.
“The sail is quite big so you need the right weight to counterbalance the sideways force of the wind knocking it over and work the boat so it goes as fast as it can.
“We are essentially hanging off of our legs off the boat. If you imagine a leg extension boat at the gym it's potentially doing that move with our legs and our shoulders are out probably at 70 degrees, doing that for hours over consecutive days, it’s not easy. It’s not champagne sailing on the big boat with the wheel."