INTERVIEW WITH KIWI TOM SCHNACKENBERG

by Isabelle Musy on 17 Sep 2000 Famous America's Cup designer, Tom Schnackenberg, shares with us his job as
A coach of the New Zealand Olympic sailing team and evaluates what the
chances are for the Kiwis.

What's the philosophy of the New-Zealand team?

The philosophy of the team is as much as possible to make it easy for the
sailors. The Olympic are quite complicated and things like the parade and
the other events and the excitement of being in the Village all make it more
difficult to just do your normal day's works.

And so the philosophy of the New
Zealand team is to try to neutralize that as much as possible so that for
the sailors is just an ordinary regatta like they're used to.
For example, all the younger ones are used to look after themselves all
their life. They go everywhere and they just have to make their own
decisions about what they do. And suddenly they come here and they 've got
people to tell them what to do. They've got coaches to give them more
support than they never had. And you think that it would be better but it's
not always necessarily the case. Because they're not quite sure how much
they should use their own brains how much they should ask for advice.
It takes a long while to settle all that down.

So our philosophy is to make
it as simple as possible. Then on the back of that what I believe is that
it's important just to empower the sailors and so that they're still using
their own brains all the time and not asking me for advice but that I 'm
just helping them make their own decisions and just helping them understand
Sydney Harbour so that they can go out and feel that they understand it
rather than think "oh so and so thinks I should go to the left" which is
obviously not much use because then they rely on us. We want them to
understand why they might go to the left and make their own decisions.

We've been working towards that.

What is exactly your job as a coach?

My job is particularly what you call technical coach. So I help a little bit
with the sails - not very much but as an old sail maker so I know a few
things -. I'm also helping with the weather. I don't try to forecast the
weather but I'm running around looking at the forecast and doing all the
work in the morning making the lists and putting them down on a piece of
paper so they've got their own copy and don't have to go and look on the
board. I also try to help them to understand what this means and just talk
with. We'll look on which course they might be on and from that what is best
side. There might be a different best side in the morning than in the
after noon. So that's my job: technical coach.

It's your third Olympics. Is this your best team?
It's too early to say. We had a very very good team in Barcelona. We did
very successful Olympics there. Some of the crews weren't highly regarded
and for example one guy who had probably the biggest reputation going into
the event was Russell Coutts who already had a gold medal and he came away
having the worst result of anybody in the team. So that's give you an idea
of how good the team was. And even Russell's result wasn't bad. He finished
8th or something like that. And we had about three people who finished
fourth and nearly won medal and of course four others who did win medals out
of ten crews. So that was fabulous results. If we did that well I'd be
delighted. But having said that we've got people who've got a chance in
every class.

You've got a few serious contenders such as for example Aaron McIntosh,
Barbara Kendall, Gavin Brady.

Yes, that's true. Those people have had good results. The 470 people have
also had good results recently. Slater has done well in the 49ner from time
To time. Chris Dickson is probably the one who doesn't have solid strong
results behind him but on the other hand he's got such a wide sailing
experience that all he need is a little bit of speed and he can convert that
into a very good performance. And if Rod Davis and the guys in the Soling
get into the Match Racing then they're very competent and very confident.
So in all the classes there is an opportunity. And Peter Fox, our laser
sailor and Clifton Webb, our Finn sailor probably have smaller reputation
but again we look at them as pretty strong sailors . Same thing with Sarah
Macky the Europe girl.
The Olympics can be such a special deal. I remember, for example, in 1996 we
had a young girl called Sharon Ferris. She was a Europe sailor and nobody
in the world knew who she was. And her boyfriend was the Finn sailor who was
a world champion maybe twice and currently pretty well ranked and they both
had quite good regattas and they both finished fifth. For her it was a
little bit better than what she has expected and for him it wasn't that
good. It's what the Olympics are like. And so the people who are not rated
have a good chance. There is enough uncertainty as things can go wrong that
once you really feel you belong to the top 6 crew then you have a chance.
And even if you're the favorites you still have a chance of only finishing
in the top six. That's what yachting is about and that's what we have eleven
races. To try to even out the good and bad luck.

Do the ones who have a good experience of the Olympics, like Barbara, share
it with the younger ones?

Yes. At two different degree. Often just what it takes is one or two words
at a particular time of the day just when it's appropriate. We don't have
special formal session but the more experience campaigners feel that
eventhough they have a job to do themselves they also feel a sense that they
can help the others. And the youngsters just keep their ears open. They ask
questions and just watch. And of course you can also learn a lot from the
experienced opponents. You just watch what they're doing.