With the departure of the Finn and the RS:X windsurfer from the Olympic line-up for Paris 2024, a number of athletes have been working hard on adjusting their weight to be competitive in their new discipline.
Six former Finn sailors have been losing weight to fit into the ILCA 7 singlehander, while Turkish Finn Olympian Alican Kaynar has gone in a different direction, now taking on the challenges of Nacra 17 sailing. Like his former Finn rivals in the ILCA 7, Kaynar also needs to be lighter for the foiling catamaran.
Meanwhile the RS:X windsurfers have been moving in the opposite direction as they aim to get up to weight for the more powerful iQFOiL boards that they’re racing in Olympic competition for the first time this week in Palma.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Champion Kiran Badloe from the Netherlands was 73kg (161 lbs) when he won gold last August. After a big eating and weight gain program the Dutchman now tips the scales at around 90kg (198 lbs) and he’s happier for it.
“I’m 1.95m (6’4″) tall, so staying at 73kg was always a struggle for me, watching what I was eating. Now I can eat anything I like! We need the extra weight on the iQFOiL because when the foil lifts us out of the water we have no water resistance and we hit high speeds. So it’s a little bit faster to have more weight to swing down.”
When Joan Cardona won bronze for Spain in the final fling of the Finn class at Tokyo 2020, he was determined to achieve more in Olympic sailing.
“That night after winning the bronze, I decided I wanted to keep going, I wanted to be in another Olympics and to fight for it. And so I just try to lose as much weight as possible. In the fastest possible way but also in the healthiest way.”
Cardona has dropped from around 105kg (231 lbs) to just below 90kg. “I always enjoy my food and I didn’t want to stop that. So I try to be as active as possible, and I just love running and cycling. So I’m exercising really hard and try to keep being able to eat more or less the same calories as for the Finn, but burning much more.”
Interestingly, like Badloe, the ILCA 7 sailor feels healthier for his radical weight adjustment. Swapping stories of their dietary journeys in different directions, Cardona comments to Badloe: “We were 30kg different in Tokyo and now we are pretty much the same weight!”
Source: https://www.trofeoprincesasofia.org/
