What It Takes to Race at the Sailing World Championships

One of the things I wanted to show with Unmoored is what an Olympic campaign actually looks like when you’re living it, because most of what people see is the racing. You see the boats going fast, the big events, the results, and maybe eventually the Olympics. What you don’t see as much is everything that has to happen around those moments.

This episode takes you with us to the World Championships, which is obviously a big event in its own right, but for me it was also another chance to figure out where I am in this whole process of trying to come back to Olympic sailing.

Getting to the start line

There is so much that happens before you ever start racing. We’re preparing the boat, talking through things as a team, watching the conditions, thinking about what we need to do that day and trying to get ourselves physically and mentally ready to race.

And because this is sailing, you can do all of that and then… wait.

You spend so much time preparing to be completely ready at a very specific moment, while also knowing that the wind may have other ideas. I think that’s one of the funny things about this sport. It requires you to be incredibly switched on, but also incredibly patient.

Eventually, though, you get the signal, get out on the water, and all of the preparation turns into racing.

Racing at a World Championship

There’s nothing like racing at this level. You’re on the same course as some of the best sailors in the world, in boats where things happen very quickly, and small decisions can have a huge impact on your race.

It’s also a pretty effective way to find out exactly where you stand.

You can train and prepare and have a sense of how things are going, but a World Championship gives you a very honest answer. There are things we’re doing well, things that clearly still need work, and moments where I’m reminded of just how high the level is.

For me, that’s particularly interesting right now because I’m not approaching these events as someone who has already decided exactly what the next several years will look like. I’m still figuring out what another Olympic campaign means for me and whether this is something I want to keep pursuing. Racing at Worlds is part of getting that answer.

The part you don’t usually see

The other thing I wanted to show in this episode is how physical all of this is.

High-performance sailing is hard on your body, and getting off the water at the end of the day doesn’t mean you’re done. You still have to recover well enough to come back and do it again the next morning. That means treatment, food, sleep, and generally trying to take care of a body that you’ve just spent hours beating up.

It isn’t necessarily the part of an Olympic campaign that makes the highlight reel, but it’s a huge part of being able to do this day after day.

I think that’s becoming one of my favorite things about making Unmoored. I get to show the parts that would normally be edited out of the story.

An Olympic campaign can sound very glamorous when you reduce it to the big moments: World Championships, international travel, representing the USA, hopefully an Olympic Games at the end of it. The day-to-day version is a lot less tidy. There’s waiting around, troubleshooting, being tired, taking care of your body, trying things that don’t work, talking through mistakes and then getting up the next day and trying again.

And I actually think that version is more interesting.

So, what did Worlds tell me?

I’m still figuring that out.

Obviously results matter, and we came here wanting to race well. But at this point in my life, I’m paying attention to more than a finishing position. I’m paying attention to how my body feels, how we work together as a team, where I feel competitive, where we have work to do, and maybe most importantly, how I feel about being back in this environment at all.

I started Unmoored because I didn’t want to tell this story retrospectively, once I already knew how everything turned out. I wanted to document the part where I genuinely don’t know.

The World Championships were another piece of that.

I don’t have some grand conclusion yet about exactly where this road leads, and I think I’m becoming more comfortable with that. Right now I’m training, racing, getting stronger, learning a lot and seeing where it takes me.

That feels like enough of an answer for now.

Watch Unmoored: What It Takes to Race at the World Championships on Foiling Mama on YouTube.