Winning the first leg into Kinsale on last year’s La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec was a huge boost to the self-belief of Irish sailor Tom Dolan’s but it is his successive consistent top seven scores this season which are giving the skipper of Smurfit Kappa-Kingspan hopes he can maintain that level through this year’s three stage race. Dolan finished fifth overall in 2020 and seventh in 2022 and, although he contends he has no specific target this time, matching those two results would surely see him happy in La Turballe where the race finishes.
He is putting his faith in unburdening himself of any feelings of pressure by making sure his mind is clear and he is taking pleasure in competing at the highest level. Working with leading Irish sports psychologist Gerry Hussey, the concept of achieving top performance through making sure the athlete is focused first and foremost on deriving enjoyment from his or her sport is a fundamental.
Speaking in Rouen before heading to Le Havre where the race starts Sunday, Dolan is in buoyant spirits. “ I have never been so ready. The offshore stages of the races I have done this season have gone well with a second and a fifth. I think enjoying what you are doing is so important in this as if you are not then you put yourself under so much pressure it affects your performance. Last year was a little different but before that there was almost too much pressure, I was so obsessed with doing well, getting results, worrying about mad things like losing sponsors, having to sell the boat, all these things going through your head when I should be out there enjoying it, especially after having prepared all year. The objective is to go out and enjoy it whilst controlling all I can control.”
Pillow talk
Deconstructing and debriefing previous races Dolan has looked in every area to find small gains, “I am putting more effort and focus into recovery on the stopovers because that’s important. What I was finding before is I would get in and sleep well the first night because you are wrecked but after that I was not sleeping well because I was waking up and not being able to fall back asleep and so I was not getting fully rested for the next leg. I am just looking more at these kind of details, like taking my own pillow to the stops! I have an eye cover, ear plugs, and I have made sure each place I stay has a bath to relax the muscles. All these little things. And when you are over tired it becomes too easy to be trying to make decisions and you find yourself looking at a screen not engaged. As you get towards the end you are not absorbing the strategy and the weather. And I will be trying to look after myself better at seas, to eat well, change my clothes to feel better, put gloves on earlier – I would always wait until the second leg when my hands were already sore to put gloves on, things like that. It was that old ‘macho’ thing ‘I don’t need gloves….’ But you do…..”
He really likes the look of the course this year….“The legs are more oceanic which I like. I did a Mini race into Spain and there were three of us in half a mile and Clarisse (Crémer) was first and she got away under a cloud and we finished five or six hours after her. We were sitting out their flapping around.
He continues, “I think the first leg, in terms of risk management, is not one to take risks on – not to do what I did on the first leg last time (when he won into Kinsale). It is more important to stick with the fleet. When you arrive in the north coast of Spain the time differences can end up being huge and so you don’t want to lose out there. And the second leg going out round Cape Finisterre can be hairy. And the third leg you are in the Chenal du Fours and the Raz de Sein twice. I like it.”
The leg win last year was an important step forwards, “It gives me more confidence, I know I can do it now. But to be honest I have more confidence now from the way I have sailed this season than winning the leg. Now it is about keep on doing what I have been doing.”
And he reflects on the three long legs, each expected to require four nights at sea: “I always enjoyed the four leg races, yes, we now have three long legs but the boats are faster and so the elapsed time is about the same. But I think overall the level is higher now but you still wonder how Charlie Dalin, say, would do in this fleet now…The differences in boat speeds in the lead group are now much smaller especially as everyone had different sails and ideas in the first couple of years.”