UKLA Chair blog #36
I always think the season is getting into full flow when evening racing starts and we had our first one at Queen Mary last Wednesday. It is handicap racing but the ILCAs get a separate start so we get two races in one. I really enjoy it maybe because it is a short race and then supper in the club afterwards!
I was at the RYA Youth Nationals at WPNSA this morning where there are several hundred youth sailors across multiple classes including ILCAs. It made me think of the benefits of sailing for these younger sailors. They certainly experience independence on the water and the ups and downs of competitive sport, helping to build resilience. They are making friends and hopefully having fun. And of course, they are dealing with winning and losing. It also shows how hard work pays off in improved skills and performance – one assumes a broader life skill.
But is it hard work rather than talent and is it essential to start at an early age to excel? This has been an important research area for many years and has been made topical through the “10,000 hour rule” in recent years but actually comes from a paper in 1973 where Simon and Chase referred to the “10 year rule” of acquiring knowledge and understanding through storing memories of experiences and situations, eventually leading to the attainment of an expert level. It was taken further by Ericsson who discusses “deliberate practice” (specific tasks usually on the cusp of the individual’s expertise and practiced over and over until expertise is achieved) and linking accumulated hours of practice with achieving expert performance. This in turn encourages earlier and earlier participation, often through talent identification and development programmes.
Of course, high profiles athletes like Tiger Woods are well known for their early start in sport and prodigious talent. He certainly started accumulating many hours of practice very early to the extent it is hard to separate this practice from the talent. One of his core “talents” was how quickly he picked up the skills and his ability to sustain so many hours of practice through to the adulthood. That’s what makes him an exception.
No one reaches elite level in a skills-based sport without accumulating many hours of practice - this makes sense and the empirical evidence backs this up. There are no exceptions and no-one bypasses this no matter how talented they are. Does starting early give an athlete a head start in accumulating those hours? There is a short-term advantage but that seems to be it. This is seen by examining the training profile of a professional ILCA sailor, training full-time versus a part-time teenager still in school. Any head-start is quickly closed by the significant extra hours of a professional. It is one of the reasons later starters shouldn’t be put off when there is so much time to catch up especially when the prime age of elite athletes is now much older than it was.
Another argument is that the skills needed in a sport need to be acquired when young before the athlete fully develops - gymnastics is often quoted. But it is hard to make those arguments in sailing. It seems obvious that boat handling skills can be acquired at any age. Feel for the boat or the wind is less obvious but is there anything in those skills that indicates they need to be acquired at a young age rather than accumulated later on? I don’t think so.
So where does that leave us? There are many benefits in sailing for younger sailors but the more hours of deliberate practice put in, the better the skills (and performances) will be – the infamous (quality) time on the water. This rather than talent will be the driver but although the context and opportunity for each younger sailor will be different, there’s always the opportunity to catch-up.