Sport / Adamson aiming to be on top of the world once again
CONQUERING the world once is hard, but one Shetland sailor is about to attempt to scale those heights all over again.
Maggie Adamson will next week defend the Offshore Double Handed World Championship title she and team-mate Cal Finlayson lifted in France 12 months ago.
The pair flew the flags for both Scotland and Great Britain as they sailed across the line just 65 seconds ahead of the chasing pack in Lorient last year, becoming champions of the world as they did.
Now they are out to repeat the feat in the Isle of Wight – with teams from countries like France, USA and Sweden setting their sights on stopping them.
Having 21 other teams out to take your crown from you is “not a position I’ve ever been in before”, Adamson admitted with a laugh.
“Another podium place would be a great result for us,” she told Shetland News.
“We have to be in it to win it, but we know that the French teams are exceptional, Germany are very strong and the Uruguay team have been there or thereabouts for years.
“We’ll go out there and give it a shot.”
The main difference between this race and others, Adamson explained, is that every boat in the race is exactly the same.
She said that when racers return to shore, the race organisers return their boats to “neutral” – “no matter what you’ve changed”.
“It makes the whole race equal, so there’s no excuses,” she said.
“If another boat is pulling away from you it’s because of something you’re not doing right, so it makes it quite competitive in that way.”
They might be world champions but Adamson and Finlayson – who race under the Solan Ocean Racing team name – still have to qualify for this year’s finals like everyone else.
The pair face a qualifier against 10 other teams next Tuesday, with the top five finishers qualifying automatically for the final.
If the finish any lower than fifth, they will head into a “second chance” race where it will be winner takes all for the last place in the final.
Teams from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, USA and Uruguay are among those vying for a top five place against Adamson and Finlayson in that qualifier.
The races are not as much of an endurance test as some of team Solan’s recent endeavours. The qualifier is a mere 24 hours, while the final will be 48 hours long.
Adamson said it would be “more like a sprint” than some of the marathon missions they have undertaken recently, with little to no sleep for the pair likely.
However they think they may have a slight advantage heading into next week’s races in the Isle of Wight – with Finlayson having lived there for the last four years.
“I’ve done quite a lot of racing out of the club there, so we have a bit of head-start keening the area,” she said.
“We know the tides can run quite fast around there too.”
Last year’s world championship win was an “awesome experience”, Adamson said, and it came off the back of the pair being “the most prepared we’d ever felt for a race”.
Team Solan was in Cherbourg in France last week for another race in preparation, finishing second of the double handed teams – behind one of the French teams, who they will compete with at the world championships.
Adamson said training had gone “pretty well” but added that financial constraints – and not owning their own boat – meant they had to “beg and borrow” to get a loan of a training boat at times.
But with training coming to an end, Adamson said there was one thing that she was especially keen to ensure team Solan do next week.
“Hopefully we can go out there and do Shetland proud.”
Solan Ocean Racing will be providing updates from the race through its Facebook page, with a live tracker also set to be posted in the next week.
You can also follow the race through the Sail Race HQ website.
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