Sixteen year-old Rhone Kirby will be representing Antigua and Barbuda and the Antigua Yacht Club at the Youth Olympic Games in China later this month.
Sailing at the Youth Olympic Games will take place in Byte CII sailboats which are not available for training in Antigua. Rhone qualified in a version of the Byte CII with a radial sail at the Youth Olympic qualifiers in Jensen Beach, Florida earlier this year but had little experience in the regular sail version of the Byte CII. So after participating in the Premier’s Cup International Youth Regatta in Tortola, BVI last month, Rhone headed to the Cayman Islands for an intense two-week pre-Olympic training program on the same equipment he will compete on in China. Other Youth Olympic qualifying sailors will participate in the same training program, providing Rhone with a true sense of the competition he will face at the Olympics.
Two young sailors who previously trained under AYC’s Chief Instructor, Karl James, run the training program in the Caymans so Karl is confident Rhone will be in good hands.
Karl anticipates that training in the Cayman Islands will see mainly heavy winds while it is expected that the winds in China will be very light much of the time. As a result, Rhone has done a lot of training in relatively windless areas inside Falmouth Harbour, near the area of the Antigua Yacht Club Marina office and the public dock. When he returns to Antigua to continue his training prior to heading to China, Karl will once again focus on light wind training with Rhone.
Antigua Yacht Club has made the training session in the Cayman Islands possible while the Antigua Olympic Committee is making the trip to China possible for Rhone and his coach.
We wish Rhone tremendous success at his first Youth Olympic Games and have no doubt that he will make Antigua proud!
By Kathy Lammers, Antigua’s Yachting Insider, www.antiguanice.com.
