Flying High

In the first of a series in which we meet Team GB Olympic sailors, ROB PEAKE chats

- Rob Peake

It has been a grey, windy, rainy October day and Dylan Fletcher has spent most of it trying to keep a 49er upright in Weymouth Bay. The 31-year-old, who has recently been selected for the British Olympic sailing team in Tokyo, probably had a hot shower in mind when he got back to the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy, but instead he is straight on duty for a scheduled chat with Yachts & Yachting. “It’s nice to get back into that autumnal, windy, wet thing, bring us back down to earth a bit,” he says with a smile. “It makes us realise this is where it actually happens.”

The ‘it’ Fletcher refers to is the goal that he and crew Stu Bithell set themselves three-and-a-half years ago – Olympic gold. “We sat down in 2016 and said, ‘What does that look like?’ We would not be going there for the T-shirt. This is a different way of campaigning.”

Fletcher and Bithell sailed in rival 49ers in the run-up to Rio, a nailbiting selection battle that eventually went the way of Fletcher and his then partner Alain Sign, who sailed well at the Games and finished sixth.

“I loved going to Rio, even though it was incredibly disappointing,” says Fletcher. “This time we feel like we’re strong medal contenders and we’re one of the few teams that could beat Pete and Blair.”

New Zealanders Peter Burling and Blair Tuke won silver at Weymouth, gold in Rio, and after taking time out to win the America’s Cup and sail the Volvo Ocean Race, are now back in ominous form. To the casual observer, they’re favourites for gold in Tokyo, but Fletcher and Bithell have made a convincing argument to the contrary.

In March, they won gold at the prestigious Princess Sofia Trophy in Palma with a day to spare. The Kiwis were a distant seventh.