HIGH WIRE ACT

With the Olympics postponed, Anna Burnet, niece of Sir Peter Blake, hopes to regain world championship-winning form on Enoshima Bay in 2021, hears ROB PEAKE

- ROB PEAKE

Back in February, when Anna Burnet and her helm John Gimson became Nacra 17 world champions – and gained the #1 world ranking in the class – it was just six months to go until the Olympics and their world was looking good.

The British pair had sent a message to the Nacra 17 fleet that as the Games approached, they were in top form – Olympic medal-winning form, unless something drastic happened.

It did. Over the subsequent six weeks, Covid-19 laid waste to much of the 2020 regatta schedule, including the Olympics itself. The day after the postponement announcement, Burnet responded positively, saying she was “just happy that we’ll still get the chance to compete”.

She and Gimson had already made the decision to continue to Paris 2024 and she said: “Luckily for us we love what we do, so another year in this campaign isn’t a bad thing. While we’re in lockdown we’ll start changing plans to peak in 2021. There’s still plenty that we can improve on and we can’t wait to get back on the water and pushing hard.”