What more can I say other than,
The best event of my life!
But before we get to that part, a little bit of background as to how I got there…
A winter in Spain, a nasty concussion, graduating with a first-class degree, a pandemic, a new job and a winter in the cold – all events since the last time I competed on the World Tour! The final element – winter in the cold, was possibly one of the toughest mental struggles of my life. The elements, whilst fun at times, were extreme and good sessions were few and far between making training sporadic and often lonely. Don’t get me wrong, I have an amazing group of friends in Hayling that made the experience a whole lot better, but I lacked consistent conditions and training partners but it certainly won’t be one I’ll be repeating in a hurry given half a choice! Despite the less than ideal preparation, I knew a few things as facts:
- I was fit and strong
- My equipment was working well
- I was fast
- I was confident
- I put zero pressure on myself and went out there and had fun!
As an athlete, sometimes we have to make difficult decisions and the announcement that we would be going to Israel this year definitely brought about a difficult conversation with my parents over the safety and political stability of the region. Balancing the desire to fulfil your dreams with the caution over safety was definitely not an easy conversation or decision, but in the end, with World Cups dropping like flies I decided to take the risk and make the most of the few events of the season. On the theme of this, it was actually an incredibly eye-opening experience to speak with some of the local athletes during the event about the Israeli culture and recent events, and their opinions and beliefs about the situation. I will openly admit that Israeli politics is not my area of expertise and I don’t know enough about the subject to form an educated judgement on it, but from speaking with the locals, the overwhelming message was very different from that portrayed by the British media…
Getting out to Israel wasn’t exactly plain sailing either – with the current COVID situation in Israel, the Israeli government decided that only athletes and event crew would be allowed in and no support staff would be allowed. I’d heard horror stories from friends about the intense security protocols and well it wasn’t far from my experience! I do now feel that the EL AL security staff at London Heathrow know a lot more about windsurfing than they probably ever wanted to but what’s the life of a professional windsurfer without a few check-in horror stories and a quick sprint across an airport to catch a flight…?
Despite the hassle, stress and uncertainly leading up to the event, once we finally arrived at the hotel it was a wonderful experience. Due to the restrictions, we were only allowed to leave the hotel to go to the event site so we weren’t able to explore the local area at all which was unfortunate as apparently it is steeped with history and ruins, but this also meant I was completely focussed on the event with no distractions!
The training days before the event taught us a few things – it’s hot, it’s windy, it’s dusty and it’s gusty! One of the best things for me about this location was the way the wind works – I’m not a morning person, ask any of the people I work with! But luckily the wind in Tiberias kicks in a 2pm every day like clockwork leaving us time to chill out in the morning and then race all afternoon and that’s pretty much how the week went.
In the women’s division, we were racing in two fleets – one traditional slalom on fins, and a new discipline: slalom foil. This meant that the crew decided which discipline we’d be racing and the prize money would be split equally between the two fleets. This was definitely in my favour as the conditions over the winter didn’t lend themselves to foiling very often so I knew I was a bit behind the crowd on that front, but I was really confident in the fin slalom and this was where I really excelled.
Day 1, I remember finishing that day with a 4th place in the first race and thinking if it all goes wrong from here, it’s still been a success and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. Whether this took all the pressure off or just made me hungry to exceed this I don’t know, but I knew I was in a good place, the training had paid off and I was ready to give my all. The conditions were challenging and knowing which equipment to take was definitely not a simple decision with winds ranging from 5 – 25 knots across the course! The biggest challenge for me was in the foiling as my inexperience coupled with natural competitiveness left me with good speed but also some huge crashes. Whilst I knew I would gain a lot of experience from just being on the course with the best girls in the World, I had to put my competitiveness to the side for risk of hurting myself or someone else! I held back a little on the foiling after some big crashes on Day 2 as I didn’t want to sacrifice everything I’d worked for in fin slalom, and whilst my results at the end of the week weren’t anything to write home about, for me that was a sign of mental strength to put my pride aside and focus on what really mattered, but still get some valuable training time in the process.
Day 3 was MY DAY! If you haven’t already seen the blog cover, my social media, or this YouTube video then I WON MY FIRST PWA RACE! If you want to see the full race and post-race interview then be sure to check out the video, but in short, it was a childhood dream come true! It affirmed three things for me:
- I’m hungry for more!
- If you fight hard enough your dreams will come true – hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard!
- When we say the PWA are a family, I standby this – we win together and we lose together and whilst my actual family couldn’t be there to celebrate with me, my PWA family made me feel like I was truly on top of the World and no matter how their days had gone, so many people went out of their ways to congratulate me and that’s something I will always be grateful for!
After that day, things couldn’t really get better and I was still bouncing around on cloud 9 the next day which definitely didn’t help my racing. It was back down to earth with a bang as I mistimed my run-up and was too excited to go and do it again that I ended up being disqualified for crossing the start line too early! Time to refocus and get back to basics – you can’t win a race on a start but you can sure as anything lose one!
From then on, I would say I sailed consistently – nothing spectacular but steadily grinding out results to solidify a great event. I finished the week in 4th and a lot of people asked if I was disappointed not to get on the podium but that wasn’t even something I had thought would be achievable at the start of the week. I came here and I smashed my goals out of the park – the final ranking was almost irrelevant to knowing that I’d smashed the processes and in the end, the results look after themselves! I was still a little way off the big 3 at the top, but equally, I’d managed to extend a good lead over 5th and was securely in 4th place.
For sure it was a rollercoaster of a week summarising the hard work balancing university and windsurfing for the last 3 years but boy did it feel good and we certainly enjoyed a bit of a party on the final evening!
But what is success without learning? I want to leave this blog with the 3 lessons I learnt during this experience:
- You will lose more than you win in your career so treasure the successes and celebrate them as you never know if it will happen again
- Preparation, both physical and mental, is key to knowing there’s nothing more you could have done so now just go and give everything you’ve got – you’ve got nothing to lose!
- Win together, lose together – we are one big family! The support I got from the other riders was so inspirational to me that no matter how bad their day may have been, they went out of their way to make me feel special and that for me was a life lesson in who I want to be and the kind of poeple I want to surround myself with!
I can’t finish this without saying thank you to a few people – short of definitely missing some people out, I want to single out Alice Read for being the best teammate, roommate and friend during this event – your support was invaluable! My parents for believing in me even when I didn’t and my sponsors, partners and supporters without whom I wouldn’t be living this wonderful dream!
