New Zealand's Jo Aleh, right, and Olivia Powrie jubilant after receiving the gold medal at the London Olympics. Photo / Mark Mitchell
New Zealand's Jo Aleh, right, and Olivia Powrie jubilant after receiving the gold medal at the London Olympics. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Standing atop an Olympic podium should have been confirmation for Kiwi sailors Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie that they had it all figured out. But for the pair collectively known as "Team Jolly", gold wasn't enough.
The women's 470 crew feel like they have unfinished business to attend to inRio next year because something still eats away at them about their performance on the waters off Weymouth three years ago. They can't shake the feeling that they didn't nail it; that they won in spite of their performance, rather than because of it.
New Zealand's Olympic landscape - How the country is looking in each sport
Friday:
Are we going to have a rowing eight once again?
Saturday:
The cost of a medal
Sunday:
Is Rio ready?
"After we won, it was like 'Oh, we won, okay - it wasn't that good was it?' " says Aleh from Rio de Janeiro, where she and Powrie have based themselves ahead of this month's Olympic test event.
"That is one of the main drivers for us. We see so many areas we thought we could be better at and until we tick those off we keep going. It was quite clear after London that yes we won, but we hadn't sailed anywhere near a perfect event, there were so many mistakes."
Trying to find the added edge to their performance drove the pair to breaking point. Putting themselves under the microscope meant for some frank conversations about each other's weaknesses, blind spots and how they operate as a team. Suddenly Team Jolly wasn't so jolly any more.
Powrie describes the last three years as the most challenging of her sailing career. "We've certainly had a few moments, a few tears and a few shouting matches. But we have ultimately learned from them and it has helped [deliver] a more consistent performance more often."
It would take a lot to break Powrie. This is a woman so agreeable she changed her name by deed poll simply because a high-spirited cousin insisted on calling her Polly, rather than her given name of Olivia. "It just kind of stuck. I ended up changing my name officially because it got a bit confusing for everyone," she explains.
Aleh freely admits she still has a few things to learn when it comes to "subtleties in communication". But then, the 29-year-old never planned to be sailing a double-handed class.
Identified as one of Yachting New Zealand's top female talents, Aleh was still in her teens when she began campaigning in the laser radial class for the Beijing Olympics. A win at a test event in Qingdao elevated Aleh into medal contender territory, a big burden for the then 22-year-old to bear.
She "sort of stuffed it up" in Beijing, finishing seventh. It was her last in the laser. "Things weren't really working out in the laser. I was just too small. You have to be another 8kg on what I am... and I didn't want to do another four years with that as an excuse."
Aleh made the decision to make the leap to the 470. Her list of potential teammates contained just one name - Olivia Powrie (as she still was back then) - and thus began the meeting of two very different minds. Going from a single-handed class to a two-person boat was a difficult adjustment for Aleh, who struggled with the idea of ceding control.
"I don't really like to get help with things, I want to do it all myself," she says. "I think it was probably harder for Polly than me, because I was just happy doing my own thing."
Aleh says they had about four years to do what would usually take twice that. They were so focused on the technical aspects of how to sail the boat in different conditions that they didn't delve too deeply into communication and teamwork.
This time, it has been a focus, with sports psychologist Jane Magnusson helping them understand how to get the best out of one another.
Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie. Photo / Richard Robinson
"It's just learning how to solve things when they come up without letting it drag on, and you see a lot of teams really struggle with that. Because you are together so much of the time and the pressure is on, things are always going to come up," says Aleh. "It's one of the biggest lessons we've had to learn. You've got to be open and be able to tell the other person what's going on."
Powrie says trust is important. They each have their own areas of responsibility - Aleh controls the tiller while Powrie controls the sails, which often sees her extend from the boat horizontally to maximise the wind, but tactical decisions are shared.
"Because there is such a high level of decision making around the race track, you have to be able to acknowledge the strengths each other brings to the boat and back each other's judgement," said Powrie.
If you were to suggest the partnership sounds a lot like a marriage, Aleh wouldn't disagree.
"One of the first things we ever did [together] was to go and get a joint bank account," she laughs.
That account has received only a modest boost since they won gold. While high-profile medallists from those Games have reaped the sponsorship rewards, Aleh and Powrie haven't had the same exposure as Valerie Adams, Mahe Drysdale, Bond & Murray or Lisa Carrington. They're almost the forgotten gold medalists.
Not that it bothers the pair. Powrie said it didn't occur to them to try to leverage their status as Olympic champions. They've been happily, and at times not so happily, preparing for their assault on Rio under the radar.
Next week's Olympic test event provides them with a chance to experience what the conditions are like at this time of year and learn more about what Powrie calls the "quirks" of the venue.
Quirks is a polite way of describing the conditions facing sailors in Rio. Concerns over the level of pollution and waste in Guanabara Bay and the health risk that poses to athletes has prompted the World Health Organisation to instruct the International Olympic Committee to conduct independent testing of the virus and bacterial levels in the water.
Team Jolly, however, are more concerned with currents, wave states and wind models than what might be lurking in the water. Most of all, they're concerned with improving themselves.
It's not the idea of defending their title, of being double gold medal winners, that drives them. It is the pursuit of perfection, which they know from experience is more elusive than gold.
