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On December 22, Yachting New Zealand announced the first 12 sailors selected to sail for New Zealand in this year’s London Summer Olympics. On the list was Stephanie Hazard, 22, of Matakana, who will skipper the first-ever NZ Women’s Olympic Match Racing Team. Stephanie will sail alongside team mates Susannah Pyatt, 21, from the North Shore and Jenna Hansen, 25, from Whangarei. She told editor Jannette Thompson that the realisation that she was indeed heading to the Games took several weeks to sink in, but now she was spending every hour of every day getting in the best shape possible for her Olympic campaign …
The Olympics is the pinnacle of all sporting events and it’s always been a dream that one day I would get to compete there. Olympic Gold is as good as it gets and it just feels amazing to think we have a shot at maybe standing on the winner’s podium while they play the NZ anthem. It’s all going to boil down to how well we prepare and who sails best on the day. Susannah, Jenna and I have been sailing together for about 18 months. Our best performance as a team was when we came fifth in Palma, Spain, in the ICF World Cup – the circuit for all the top Olympic sailing countries in our class. Placing fifth gave us a great boost in confidence – it showed us that we could do it. Then last December we placed ninth in the World Matching Racing Championship in Perth, with NZ finishing eighth overall. There were 29 teams in the regatta and honestly, the racing was really, really tight. With match racing at the Olympics, there won’t be any real clear-cut favourites, although the Americans and the British are always strong contenders. Mum and Dad have already booked their flights and it’s going to be great to have them there – I’m so lucky to have such a supportive family.
Match racing is a fairly intense 18 minutes of sailing, which involves two boats going head-to-head. We race in the six-metre Elliott 6, a NZ-designed boat, and all boats are supplied by the regatta, which keeps things pretty even. There’ll be a single round robin, with quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals. It’s a great spectator sport, because the racing is fast and close, and the winner is often the team that makes the fewest mistakes. We’ll be sailing at Weymouth, about three hours south of London, for almost the duration of the Games, starting on July 29 and finishing with the final race on August 11. Our practise schedule means we won’t even be able to attend the opening ceremony, which is a bit of a shame. This is the first time match racing has been included in the Olympics and will possibly be the only time, as we know already that it isn’t on the list for Brazil in 2016. So there’s a certain sense that this is a one-off opportunity.
Yachting NZ was the first sports body to announce its Olympic team and it’s a real boost to have achieved early selection. It means that instead of training to reach peak performance to gain selection, we can now just focus our training entirely on peaking at the Olympics. Our schedule is pretty tight from now on in. We’ve got two trips to overseas competitions and trainings before July – in France and Spain this month (March) and then in Weymouth and Sweden in June. At this stage of training, it’s about refining the lessons we’ve learned, putting it together and then putting it through some test runs at Weymouth. It’s only natural to feel nervous in the lead-up to a race, but it’s how you use the nerves and control them that counts. I try to remember that our opponents are probably just as nervous; all we have to do is sail well and do what we know we can do. There are a lot of set moves in match racing and when you’re on the course, a lot of the sailing happens automatically. So the things that we concentrate on are the breeze, the course geometry and where the other boat is. You’re anticipating what moves the other boat might make and how you will respond.
Since the announcement, the level of preparation has definitely picked up. We were back into boot camp at 7am on January 2, because obviously fitness is a big part of our preparation. We work out with a trainer from Monday to Friday doing up to three hours of strength and cardio at the Millenium gym. We’ve been on a rough dietary plan for the past year with lots of protein and carbohydrates, and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, but what we eat and when we eat is now getting more specific. We eat a lot of food, but always seem to be hungry! The team’s total weight can’t be any heavier than 204kg, which is roughly 68kg per sailor. It terms of sailing, you want to be as close to that 204kg mark as possible because it makes it easier to counter-balance the heel from the wind. Most teams have more trouble getting up to the maximum. The training schedule is pretty rigid and doesn’t allow much time for anything else. I manage to catch-up with a few friends for coffee or a meal occasionally, but I can’t afford to go out partying; not when I’m getting up at 6am to be at the gym by 7am. You have to love what you’re doing otherwise you couldn’t be as dedicated and focused as you need to be.
The one thing about sailing is that it’s never boring. When you’re racing, you’re pushing to get the best out of your boat, the conditions and especially yourself. There are all sorts of factors that you have to take into account so you have to be able to think quickly and stay calm. Any added pressure at being the skipper really depends on the team. Out on the water, we’ve all got our jobs to do – I steer the boat and it’s always the skipper who has the final call. We sail most days out of Westhaven, but as the only campaigning women’s match racing team in NZ, it’s hard to get competition so we often train against the different teams. Our programme also involves lots of meetings to talk about tactics, sports psychology, gym instruction, sponsorships and nutrition. Sponsorship is always a big issue – last year we struggled financially and even for the Olympics, we’re still about $15,000 short.
I guess you could say I come from a sailing family on my Dad’s side – mostly recreational but some have done a little ocean racing. My parents (Bernadette and Nick) are Kiwis who like to travel. I was born in Australia, but we were living in Tanzania when I first jumped into a boat on my own when I was about nine. We came to live in Matakana a couple of years later and I started sailing with the Sandspit Yacht Club. My younger brothers, David and Paul, and I were all in racing teams at Mahurangi College. We’d go to championships all over NZ and some of those school sailing trips stand out as some of the best times ever at school. Both the club and the school sailing competitions played a key role in developing my skills as a sailor – through the school sailing programme I learned the tactical stuff, while the club introduced me to competition racing. For anyone thinking of sailing, you couldn’t have a better introduction to the sport.
I’m not really giving too much thought to ‘after’ the Olympics, as it’s enough just to worry about everything that needs to be accomplished ‘before’ the Olympics. But, I guess it will involve finishing the mechanical engineering degree, which I am just a little over half way through at Auckland University. After that, who knows? But, whatever it is, I know it will involve sailing.
Readers can follow Stephanie and the team’s progress at Koru Match on Facebook.
In Beijing in 2008, board sailor Tom Ashley brought home one of the three gold medals won by NZ. The other golds were won by Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell in rowing, and Valerie Vili, for women’s shot put.
