James Percival-Cooke
My Story
In April 2009, at the age of 8 I took part
in my first NBYC Easter Sailing School.
A weeklong camp set up initially many years ago for the children of
members wanting to work their way through the RYA sailing qualifications. This was the first of many camps I attended
over the coming years with my siblings and was always lots of fun to look
forward to in the Easter holidays. It
was during these camps that my sailing passion was further ignited with the
competitive part of me growing.
Racing at my local club was tough, with the
older children being more skilled at racing. I was being thrown in the deep
end, it was a great learning environment and my racing skills improved
considerably over my first few years of club racing.
In August 2014, at the age of 12, I
competed in my first National Championship in Weymouth at the National Sailing
Academy. This turned out to be a baptism
of fire, being my first time sailing on the sea, I had been an inland sailor
until this point which is quite different.
It was also the largest fleet I had ever experienced, over 170 boats! I
was either going to love it or hate it…. Clearly it was the former as I am
still driven by my passion for sailing today.
This event opened my eyes to where my competing passion would lie, and I
experienced more drive in working my way up from Junior to Youth and inevitably
onto Olympic single handed dinghy racing.
Towards the end of this year, I took part in the very first ‘Barts Bash’. A sailing event inspired by the memory of Olympic Gold and Silver medalist Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson MBE. The event was verified that year by the Guinness Book of records as ‘The Largest Sailing race in the World’.
With the help of my Mum, we set up a Just Giving page and raised over £3000 for the event. As a result of this I was invited to the London Boat Show the following January to receive the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Medals as a memento from my participation and fund raising. I was presented these by Sir Ben Ainslie and had the opportunity to see the certificate awarded by the Guinness Book of Records.
I was also invited to be photographed in my Optimist leading the Star Fleet during a photo campaign for the event at Norfolk Broads Yacht Club. The Star Fleet was sporting the spectacular specially designed artwork from Fine Art sails.
That Autumn, my goal was to be selected for the RYA East Optimist Zone Squad, the first stepping stone to being in the National Squad in the Optimist class. Unfortunately, I was considered too big for an optimist dinghy and was not selected. After an email from my Mother to our area High Performance Manager for the RYA my case was reviewed, and I was offered a place in the RYA East Topper Zone Squad based on my skill set.
The Topper is the next class of single-handed dinghy to move into after the Optimist. While initially disgruntled by this offer, as I didn’t really want to move out of the boat I had just mastered and was enjoying, I accepted it and it wasn’t long before I realized that I had made the best decision.
The summer of 2015 led to me qualifying for my first National Squad with a 10th place finish at a National Series event, and I travelled to Lake Garda in Italy for the World Championships. The following year I earnt my place in the Topper Intermediate National Squad, travelling to Belfast for the World Championships and on to North Berwick in Scotland for the Nationals. This was to be my final competition in the Topper as I was now ready for the move into the final single handed dinghy class on my pathway – The Laser, now known as the ILCA. This class of dinghy has 3 sail sizes, the 4.7 the Radial and finally the Standard. The general idea is you start in the 4.7 rig (ILCA 4) and as you grow and your body weight and height increase you move up through to the Radial rig (ILCA 6), finishing in the Standard rig (ILCA 7) which is the one competed in at the Olympics today. However, moving from the Topper into the ILCA 4.7 is a huge step. But I was now ready for this transition….
During the winter of 2016 I managed to qualify for the National 4.7 Squad and took many trips down to Weymouth and other venues including Pwhelli and Plymouth. However, after some fairly average results in the next qualifying events, I fell just short of the cut and unfortunately lost my place in the squad for that summer. My confidence was knocked, but I soon realized that this was a new boat to me, so I had to learn quickly how to race something that reacts very differently to my previous boat. This is an Olympic class boat, so is quicker, more delicate to place, different sails, ropes and weight.
I felt I had a lot to prove to myself when I arrived at the Laser 4.7 World Championships in Belgium in the summer of 2017. With such mounting pressure it only made it difficult for me to succeed and unfortunately, I was left with a disqualification on my first day of the event. This was not going to be easy and with some generally good results I was not having consistency over the following days. I decided to leave the event early, in hindsight a mistake! I showed to myself that I lost the opportunity to work through the issues I was having, and have since learnt each following day is a different day, so embrace it!
The end of that summer brought my ILCA 4.7 sailing to a close and it was then time to move up to the Radial rig, known as the ILCA 6. I continued sailing and competing unsupported by the RYA Squad system that year while studying for my GCSE’s, which I would take the following summer.
Also, that year I competed at the Youth Nationals where I finished a respectable 14th out of 46. The next competition was The Youth World Championships in Kiel, Germany which I recall being a tough competition. The event highlighted that more International racing was needed and my result was not what I expected of myself.
That event drew a close to my year in the ILCA 6 and a realisation that perhaps I had now outgrown that sail size. It was time for the final move up to the ILCA 7, this is the Men’s Olympic Single Handed Dinghy class.
That winter, I was lucky enough to receive a sailing scholarship to the Royal Hospital School, allowing me to continue training while also studying for my A-levels. The following 2 years at RHS was tricky at times while I endeavored to manage and balance concentration on my academics as well as trying to train where I could. Based on this there was not much progress in my ILCA 7 racing career.
In 2019 I competed in the Under 21 ILCA 7 World Championships in Croatia. My results in this event reflected that the lack of training whilst completing my A level studies had in no doubt had a bearing.
Then COVID-19 hit…… though I believe I was lucky to be one of the few people who benefitted from the pandemic.
As my academic year was cut short, I was unable to sit the A-level exams (Business, Geography and Chemistry) I had been studying for. So, I had lots of time to get out on the water and managed to get a small group of 3 people together to start training from Lowestoft 5 days a week. Over 6 weeks, our sailing continually improved, and we joined everyone else at the National Sailing Academy in Weymouth for several weeks during the summer of 2020. We were lucky enough to race against the Olympic Squad, including Elliot Hanson, our hopeful competitor for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 (which ultimately took place in 2021). This entire experience improved my sailing greatly and I managed to qualify for the RYA’s Youth to Olympic Transition Squad for the winter.
In March 2021 I made the decision to leave home in Norfolk and move down to Portland full time to train, using Deliveroo as my source of income as well as coaching younger sailors.
This decision allowed me to train every day of the week and, just a month later, a squad member and I managed to get permission to leave lockdown to live in Portugal for 6 weeks. This was so we could train and compete with the rest of the Olympic Senior Circuit for the last 2 European Olympic spots. This helped me gain the experience I desperately needed in an international fleet.
The beginning of the Under 21 European Championships in Montenegro was very challenging with only average results that put me outside of the top half of the fleet. The following day saw no racing at all due to lack of wind. The day after that I brought on my A-game and had my first international race win! The day after, I started very well and scored two 3rd places.
I finished 21st overall and was annoyingly unable to climb back up the leaderboard due to a lack of wind on the final day. But overall, I was relatively happy with my performance and was going into the summer with the confidence I needed.
The next event was The Under 21 World Championships in Poland later in the summer. I was raring to go.
I started the event in about the worst way possible, with a UFD (U-Flagged disqualified) which meant I was over the line in the first race! Having only one discard over 12 scheduled races meant I had to be consistent throughout the rest of the event to finish with a respectable result. As the week progressed, I worked hard with the knowledge my discard had already been used. I finished with a respectable 13th overall out of 138 sailors which I felt was the best outcome given the circumstances I found myself in. With this result I was also the No1 British sailor at this World Championship. All in all a successful campaign with me facing adversity and overcoming the situation.
To finish off the 2021 season we then had the Senior European and World Championships in Varna, Bulgaria and Barcelona, Spain. These were the first senior events I could compete in so the goal was just to learn as much as I could due to the very steep transition against older and arguably the best sailors in the world.
This past winter, I’ve also been lucky enough to train abroad in Portugal as part of the Olympic Transition Squad for the second year in a row. The first event of this season started in Palma, Mallorca for the Princess Trofeo Sofia. My performance at this event showed potential, along with my work over the winter, and I was one of the few shortlisted for the newly formed British Sailing Squad. After returning from competing at the Senior World Championships in Mexico in June 2022, I have secured my place in the British Sailing Squad after a respectable performance at the event of over 120 cometitors. I qualified not only for my first senior gold fleet but also achieved my first Podium in a Senior Worlds race. I am now just one of two sailors in this new squad, which is aimed at selection for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles in just 6 years’ time.