“If something goes wrong, women still think about it a week later. For men, it's easy to go to the bar, get a beer and get over it. It's done. Women have more emotions and they can spend a long time thinking about it….”
Phewww! Imagine saying that about the fairer sex. We blokes would be hung, drawn and quartered for uttering such blasphemies. But it wasn’t me, guv! It was Marcelien de Koning, three-time 470 World Champion (that's her on the right, with crew Lobke Berkhout), who lays out her “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” theories in my latest SailingTalk Xpress interview.
Click here to sign up and read the full interview. In the past few months we’ve profiled many of the best sailors in the world, including Darren Bundock, Howie Hamlin, Simon Daubney and Stevie Morrison.
Marcelien, by the way, is heavily engaged in the politics of Olympic sailing too. As if full-time Olympic campaigning wasn't enough for a girl to do, Marcelien also chairs the recently formed ISAF Athletes Commission, so she has been paying close attention to the fall-out from the Olympic Events vote in Estoril in early November.
She wants to see greater athlete representation on the ISAF Council. Currently there are no current athletes on the 40-person committee, something Marcelien hopes will change very soon.
But this interview is not about politics. It’s about team work. Actually, when you think about it, maybe team work is a form of politics! Funnily enough, when I called Marcelien she was making her way from the Netherlands to Germany for a weekend out in sub-zero conditions with Lobke and their coach, with the prospect of sleeping in a tent.
The idea, apparently, is to toughen the girls up. Whether or not the coach still had his job at the end of the weekend, I haven't found out.
Click here to sign up and read the full interview.
