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Newly appointed Head of Sport Development at the RYA, Alistair Dickson talks to TOBY HEPPELL about sailing’s future

The appointment of Alistair Dickson as Head of Sport Development at the RYA will be pleasing to anyone who has ever accused management at the RYA of being out of touch with the sport. Dickson comes from a sailing background racing Laser Radials and then Lasers as a youth, before moving on to a career in the armed forces. “I always enjoyed working in sailing and had done a fair bit of work at Plas Meni since the age of 16,” says Dickson. “I then went to do a few years coaching out in Canada and the US.”

Following this early sailing pathway Dickson signed up to the forces as an officer in the Royal Engineers “I really saw two options for my future, in sailing and in the forces,” he comments, though he didn’t think the two were necessarily mutually exclusive and thought he would return to a career in the world of sailing eventually. After contracting skin cancer following time in Afghanistan, he worked for LOCOG in the process leading up to the

Olympic Games in 2012, before moving to the RYA in Wales, then World Sailing and ultimately to his current position at the RYA at the tail end of 2016.

ON THE WATER