Olympic skipper Oskar Johansson and crewman Kevin Stittle sail in the Olympics' fastest class in the Tornado and want to have the sleekest physiques in the light winds off Qingdao next month.
They've shed 30 pounds of personal ballast in a weight-loss plan to improve their nautical strategy in breezes that are notoriously light in the hot summer on the Yellow Sea off southeast Shandong province. The breezes are a puff of 10 km per hour this week. They average little better than 15, so a tubby crew is an anchor too many aboard.
"The wind is forecast to be light. We've had sessions on the area of the course, one last August at the time of the Games and one this summer, and it's been pretty much up to reputation," Johansson said in an interview in Toronto, where much of the Olympic team gathered for a sendoff at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
"We know it can blow, and most of the times we do practise in higher winds, but we're preparing for light winds. We've lost, between us, 30 pounds since the worlds, so we met our goals. The boat was left in a good state and placed in a rented container to protect it and now we're waiting until Friday, when we leave, Aug. 1. We're confident everything will be in shape."
Part of that is the condition of the course, which was plagued by the largest bloom of algae in recent memory.
"You can't escape. It's around you and you cannot make your proper course. To be honest, it's a big problem," Andreas Kosuratopoulos, a member of the Greek sailing team said in a CBC interview.
China mobilized 10,000 solders, 1,000 fishing boats with their nets out and thousands of factory workers - sidelined from their normal smoke-producing jobs by the government's effort to clear the polluted skies - to haul green gunk out of the water. More than 600,000 tons of the stuff was harvested by locals and the troops. It's destined for fertilizer use. Meanwhile, two booms were floated outside the course to prevent any more of the green peril from floating in. The conditions are reasonable clear in the racing zone now.
"I trained for 16 years and wasn't looking forward to having to relearn everything in mid-August to steer clean of these islands of algae," Johansson said. "It was getting to be a matter of 'the boat with the clearest water would win.'"
Chris Cook, a finn sailor who had been in the top 10 at the past four world championships, said the Chinese did a "top notch job of cleanup and some Canadians have been over recently to look at it and it's 100-per-cent better than it was."
As for losing weight to deal with the light winds, "some other Canadian teams have done it, but I'd rather be heavy in light air than light in heavy winds," Cook said. "It's 15 (kph) this week and some have trained in winds up to 25.
"I haven't lost a single pounds in preparation [for the Games]
"I'm aiming for top-five finishes in every race and historically that wins you a medal at the Games."
Topping Canada's list of potential sailing medallists are Cook of Toronto, in the finn class; laser sailor Mike Leigh of Vancouver; and the team of skipper Oskar Johansson of Toronto and crew Kevin Stittle of Orangeville, Ont., in the tornado class which is the fastest Olympic boat.
Besides Cook's four consecutive top 10 finishes in the finn world championships, Mike Leigh won the 2008 Semaine Olympique Francais race and is ranked fifth in the world. Johansson and Stittle were second at the tornado world championships and are currently ranked seventh in the world. They're rated Canada's top medal-potential fleet.
Other members of the Olympic team include Gordon Cook of Toronto and Ben Remocker of Vancouver in the 49er; Lisa Ross of Halifax in the radial; windsurfers Zac Plavsic and Nikola Girke of Vancouver; Stephane Locas of Montreal and Oliver Bone of Beaconsfield, Que., in the 470; and the trio Jen Provan of Toronto, Martha Henderson of Toronto and Katie Abbott of Sarnia, Ont., in the yngling.