Year’s delay proves silver lining for duo
Foiling cat sailors reckon extra experience could help ahead of Olympics debut, writes Duncan Johnstone.
Micah Wilkinson’s positivity is something to behold as the New Zealand sailor has his Olympics debut put on hold.
Wilkinson and his Nacra17 crew mate Erica Dawson were the newcomers in the first wave of seven Kiwi yachties named for Tokyo 2020.
With the Games postponed until 2021, the 24-year-old sees a silver lining to the delay.
The foiling catamaran class has seen the Kiwi crews go through musical chairs with their partnerships and Wilkinson and Dawson claimed the Olympics berth with less than a year sailing together.
With more time under their hulls, Wilkinson believes they can only get better and increase their medal potential for when the Games do actually happen.
They’ve been on a rapid upward curve with their results, the latest being a seventh at February’s world championships in Australia.
Wilkinson admits to mixed emotions, but believes he and Dawson will benefit from this unexpected hiccup.
‘‘It’s an up and down feeling. Your first Olympics and you work so hard for this moment and the excitement building towards it,’’ Wilkinson said.
‘‘On the other side, the logical brain is going: we are kind of inexperienced so another year for us is probably a good thing. Our long term focus was very much on Paris 2024 and all of a sudden we found ourselves learning very quickly and in the driver’s seat and gaining qualification (for Tokyo). That was massive excitement.
‘‘We can’t do much about this so at the moment I’m kind of putting all the emotions on hold while we get through this next critical period.’’
The globetrotter has headed to landlocked Cambridge for the lockdown to spend time with his family.
‘‘We travel the world so much it’s an opportunity to actually spend a month with my family. I appreciate the perspective . . . we live an amazing life and we are incredibly lucky and this is a chance to spend some time with the family.’’
He will be working on his strength and fitness and plans to use the downtime to get another project under way.
‘‘I’m trying to start studying engineering on the side.
There’s a lot of online stuff that I can now do that I wouldn’t normally have time for.’’ Wilkinson is no stranger to new ideas. He and Dawson have broken the Kiwi mould in the foiling catamaran class. The makeup of the New Zealand crews has always seen women on the helm and men handling the more physical trimming role.
But Wilkinson and Dawson went the other way, bringing them in line with ‘‘about 85 per cent’’ of the international fleet that travels the globe for regattas.
‘‘I thought we’d buck the trend and take it on, and it’s actually worked out really well,’’ Wilkinson, an under-23 Nacra17 world champion and winner of the inaugural Red Bull foiling generation world title, said. ‘‘Crewing is a physical role but Erica has gone from strength to strength . . . she’s a bit of a machine.’’