Olympic test event in the port of Marseille: sailing in an unpredictable ‘shit pit’

They just came from the water. The catamaran in which Laila van der Meer and Bjarne Bouwer sail together is back on the slipway of the port of Roucas Blanc, in Marseille. The sail is stowed.

How did it go? Van der Meer, the mate, opens a coke. You tell me, she signals to Builder. “Very difficult wind,” he says. “We really had to keep our heads cool.” He points to the mountain range south of the city. “The wind came from there. And the wind can’t go through that mountain. So he’s going to pick a side. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Very difficult to predict.”

They had already noticed in advance that it would be difficult, says Van der Meer, and it is not the first time that they have sailed here. “But it’s still extreme.”

The Olympic sailing competitions will take place in this port in Marseille next year, during the Summer Games, which will mostly take place in Paris.

But in recent days, a small Olympic circus has already traveled through Marseille. Until Sunday, the port was the stage for a week for a so-called Olympic test event. A kind of ‘dress rehearsal’, in the words of sailor Duko Bos, which ends in a Laser, in which triple Olympic medalist Marit Bouwmeester also sails. “The atmosphere, how everything runs, that is a difference from a normal match.” The terrain is completely cordoned off, the safety rules are stricter than normal and for the younger athletes it takes some getting used to passing a real mixed zone to be directed to talk to journalists. Also, only one athlete or duo per country may compete per discipline, just like at the Games later.

A bunch of islands

The Olympic port, south of the old center of Marseille, is not yet completely finished. A collection of insignificant buildings have been demolished, but the hangars still look a bit unfinished and there are mountains of sand on the site. Yet it is also a pretty photogenic part of the city, with a tuft of islands off the coast – one with a real castle – and on the hill behind the villas of the prosperous Marseillais.

At the test event, Dutch sailors, kiters and surfers can take steps to qualify for ‘Paris’, just like at the World Cup in Scheveningen next month. For those who succeed, the event is already a good time to gain competition experience under the difficult conditions of this bay in the Mediterranean Sea.

Because it is difficult, everyone agrees on that.

“I had already heard stories,” says Laser sailor Bos. “It’s super crazy here.” But that’s fun, he says. “Sometimes you have those places where it is the same every day. This is varied.”

Because of those mountains, and that wind. “That shift a lot,” says kiter Annelous Lammerts. “You have to be able to do a lot here. You pick your kite for the day, and it might be good for the first two, three races. But if the wind gets really strong in race four, you have to be able to keep it. Because you often don’t have time to change your kite.” Only if safety is at stake, in the event of too great weather changes, does the organization schedule a changeover time.

It has been quite exciting on the water for the kite surfers in recent days, especially because the two beaches from which they have to start together with the surfers are quite small and collisions are lurking. “On Monday I also had a good crash on the way to the beach,” says Lammerts. Nothing serious happened, but it was still pretty “tricky”. Not least because she has a big ‘sword’ under her board.

60 kilometers per hour

Kiting – an Olympic discipline for the first time in 2024 – is done with so-called foils, where there is a fin on a sword under the shelf. As a result, the kiter, which can reach 60 kilometers per hour, is pushed high into the air. Foiling has become very popular in a relatively short time. Five of the ten Olympic sailing disciplines are now of the high-speed foiling class.

In addition to the wind, there is more at play here, says Marit Bouwmeester. “Normally waves break on sandy beaches, but there are very few here. So then those waves come back,” says the Olympic champion of Rio 2016. It can be, in jargon, “a bit of a mess here”. “You really have to pay attention.”

To give athletes the opportunity to make enough progress on the water here, the Water Sports Association has been renting an old boat yard in the historic harbor of the city for two years now. The boats are downstairs and upstairs is a six-bedroom apartment. It’s called the ‘home base’. From there, everyone can go to the water at the Olympic harbor to train. Kiter Annelous Lammerts lived there for a while with “the Laser girls”. “Very cosy.”

“That’s nice, to go to work via the water,” says her coach, Casper Bouman.

But in addition to practical experience, there is also more and better data available in sailing. About current, wind, waves, but also, for example, about the position of the boat in the water.

Coaches need to know all this, says Arnoud Hummel, head coach of the Watersportverbond. But not every athlete is a data guzzler. “You have sailors who are very data-oriented and who become insecure if you know something they don’t know. While another thinks: ‘Pooh, never mind, then a slightly lesser decision. If only I can think clearly.’”

Not too fixated on dates

Wanting to know more, emphasizes Hummel, is not necessarily better. “In the past I have seen people who wanted to get too much certainty from the numbers and were ruined by it. In the end there are circumstances, and we had them here in Marseille this week, where the best plan is not to have a plan.”

Annette Duetz, who sails in the single scull with Odile van Aanholt, even graduated on the sea here at Marseille. For her master’s degree in applied physics, she researched the atmospheric conditions in the bay. Does that information help her? Yes, she says. “But the trick is to keep racing open.” Especially when the circumstances are unpredictable. And not, as head coach Hummel also said, getting too fixated on the data and wanting to predict it. “But”, adds Van Aanholt, “if we first start with what we see, that knowledge can then give extra confidence. Just so we know: it’s not surprising that this is happening. And we also notice that we can sometimes anticipate better than the rest.” The duo, who became European and world champions in a short time, eventually came first in Marseille.

For Marit Bouwmeester – who also became European champion in March, five months after she returned from maternity leave – it was just as successful a week. She also came first. And, as the team’s press officer noted, got a good picture of the circumstances – although she is not quite “at ease” in Marseille yet. “But,” she says, “you are never comfortable here because it is always changing.”