Catching up with Ben Saxton and Hannah Diamond

While AP is up again and the sailors take their time to further recover from a long day racing yesterday, we had a quick chat with the first British team on the ranking. Ben Saxton and Hannah Diamond are currently in fifth position overall.

“We are really happy about yesterday’s results. We had quite a long time waiting, so it was really good to get in a lot of racing”, says Hannah.

Wednesday’s conditions were perfect for racing, but the weather forecast for the coming three days shows less breeze.  Being asked about their favourite circumstances, Ben answered: “We are being a new fleet, so we don’t know what our favourite stuff is. For here, we just to have enough wind to race and be on the boat.”

Hannah’s Olympic class experience comes from the Laser Radials. She has recently finished university, so this is her first fulltime campaign for Rio. Ben gained Olympic sailing experience in the 470, in which he competed three years. “The last season was fulltime and now we are learning to sail multihulls.”

“We are loving it”, says Hannah about their transition to the mixed mulithull. “It is completely different from anything we have done before, which is a massive challenge. It is really exciting. We love the speed and how close the finishing is and boat to boat. We are learning so much, it is really good fun.

Ben adds: “We have a good group to train with and we are getting on well. We are pushing each other and all four of us made it to the gold fleet. We are happy with that, so we are doing some stuff alright.

According to Ben and Hannah they don’t really have a goal in terms of results for coming days? Ben: “We want to sail well and then we get the results if that happens.”According to Hannah they do have some kind of goal: “We like to make it to the Medal Race, but at this stage it is about learning to sail the boat and learning to race in the fleet. Like Ben said, if we sail well, we will be happy.”