Sailing is among the sports showcasing athletes from the Cayman Islands at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games under way in Nanjing, China.
After a slow start on Lake Jinniu, about 44 miles outside of Nanjing, Pablo Bertran and Florence Allan have settled into a groove. In fact, Pablo, 16, recorded his first top finish on Wednesday, placing second overall in his seventh race on a Byte CII boat, a one-person dinghy.
The International Sailing Federation, the sport’s world governing body, has been monitoring the progress of competing countries, including Cayman. Among the officials present in China is ISAF secretariat and media coordinator Daniel Smith, who interviewed and arranged for print coverage of the sailors. According to Mr. Smith, Pablo was happy with how the race played out.
“I’m pretty happy,” Pablo said. “I wasn’t doing too well coming into the top mark, I was about tenth but coming into the downwind I split from everybody at the gate and when I came back I was second. I’m very happy for the last one but not for the first two races.”
In the first two races of the day, Pablo finished 23rd and 15th and is positioned 20th overall. With a single race scheduled on Thursday, his plan was to “just go for it and try my hardest.”
Florence, who is also 16, is in the girl’s division of the Byte CII class. On the third day of racing, she finished 13th, 16th and discarded a 31-Did Not Finish score. She is currently positioned in 22nd place at the midway point of the event.
The games started earlier this week and the sailors got off to a decent start, ranking in the middle of the pack after day one. Florence, who carried the Cayman flag for the opening ceremony, was the leading sailor in 18th place and said her initial attempts were eventful.
“In the first race it was really good because I got an eighth, but in the second race I got flagged on the line, so I didn’t do so well, but it was mostly good,” she said. “It’s a really good competition. I’m having loads of fun and it’s really cool to meet everybody and have a really good competition.”
On day one, Pablo finished 19th and 27th and was 23rd out of 30 sailors. On the second day of competition, both Pablo and Florence sailed conservatively. Pablo ended up 26th overall, fighting hard for position in a light breeze to finish 20th and 22nd in his races. Florence was in 21st place out of 30 competitors after finishing 25th and 17th in her races.
Despite the slow start, Pablo was in a positive mood.
“It’s really good to meet new people and make new friends. We’ve got new boats here and back at home we have quite old ones. I’ve met our athletes who do track and field, gymnastics and horse riding, it’s great.”
Cayman has five athletes competing across four sports. Aside from the sailors, Morgan Lloyd, Cayman’s youngest competitor at age 15, is competing in the women’s all-around artistic gymnastics competition and producing personal bests. Polly Serpell, 16, has held her own in the equestrian events and Pearl Morgan, 16, will run in the 200-meter sprint on Friday.
It should be noted injury played a role in Pablo’s early results, as he experienced knee pain due to his training regimen.
“Before this I had an injury so I took a little rest, but before that I was used to training every day,” he said. “I was pushing my knees and every day I wore it down. It was not so much hiking in the boat, just overuse and pushing it. It was injured a week out before and the first time I sailed after that was here in China.”
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