Words & Photos: Andrew Gough
Matt Belcher found a few minutes in his busy schedule to share his experiences and progress towards London in 2012.
Matt Belcher you only have a few weeks before the Australian Championships, what has been your preparation so far?
Matt: Well our preparation has been a little bit limited, we have just sort of come back from Miami the second world cup event for this year, so we have had a few weeks off and now you can just see we are starting to rig the boat, next week will see us down in Canberra at the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) for a week, and then after a few days in Sydney we have the Sydney harbour regatta, and get back here few days before the event.
What attributed to your success last year?
Matt : Well Australia has a very good system in 470’s , we have one of the best coaches in the world, Victor Kovelenko and my crew is the current Olympic gold medalist, so for us it was just a matter of putting abit more time in then we did in 2009 and it was different priorities for different years, I mean last year we wanted to make sure we won the worlds, and try and establish ourselves in definitely the top 3, but you know we came out number 1 and we were happy to achieve that last year, but we spent a lot more days, we did almost three times what we did the previous year. So this year we are just looking at keeping our momentum and keep establishing ourselves and keep learning, so we will see what happens this year.
Just finally, what does the future hold for your campaign towards London?
Matt: Um, I don’t know, I guess that’s why it’s the future ( laugh), for us its just keep training hard, keep learning and keep improving, we are happy with how the seasons going so far, we are happy with our progress, and you know as Victor says it’s a long journey…
It was great to catch up with Matt and get an insight into the busy life of an Olympic campaigner, 470 World Champion and Queensland Sailing Team member.
All the best to Matt and Mal!