Profiles

John Robertson © Skandia Team GBR

Now thirty-six, two-time world champion John Robertson's sailing career began when he was just ten.

He joined the local yacht club and his father, Ian Robertson, took him out in a Mirror dinghy along the Sunderland coast.

Sailing on the sea, he stresses. They're not pond sailors, frightened they'll end up going down the plughole, he says, in reference to people who sail on reservoirs and lakes.

John started off by crewing with his brother, Adrian. When they got older they used to sail by themselves.

Ian says: "He was always keen and, as soon as he was old enough, twelve or thirteen, he was on the rescue boat, driving that about. He was always keen to be on the water."

Great courage and fortitude

Although John now competes all over the world, in the early days they sailed mainly around Sunderland, Tynemouth and Shields. Scaling Dam and the Lake District was about as far as they went.

Then, in his mid-twenties, John had a motorbike accident which left him paraplegic and permanently in a wheelchair.

He didn't give in.

John Robertson and crew ©SkandiaTeamGBR

His father says: "I admire him tremendously for that. He's always been positive. Great courage and fortitude has John. I admire him tremendously."

He does think that John's passion for sailing gave him something to carry on for.

He says: "I think it gave him a focus. Something to go for. And he could see that it could be done. He started in the Challenger class and then the Olympics people, the RYA, spotted him and asked him to sail the Sonar."

John has a specially adapted boat to sail in. He has a bench seat that slides from side to side, but curved at the edges so he doesn't fall out.

This means he can move from one side of the boat to the other as he changes course, or tacks, and the sail moves across the boat, or jibes.

Bound for Beijing

John was one of six British disabled sailors in the ParalympicsGB team for the 2008 Paralympic Games, and competed at the Olympic Sailing Centre at Qingdao.

He skippered the same crew in Beijing as he had in Athens in 2004, leading 22-year-old Hannah Stodel from Essex and 31-year-old Stephen Thomas from South Wales.

They won world championship golds in 2005 and 2006 and finished sixth in Athens but their medal haul in Beijing wasn't quite as rich, with them finishing sixth.

Despite this, John says it's good to have had the same crew for the past six years. They work very well together, have learnt each other's strengths and weaknesses.

They know what to say and, more importantly, what not to say. After all, says John: "We spend more time together than a married couple."

Olympic Sailing Centre at Qingdao

To have had Beijing in their sights, John says, was: "Fantastic really, to get to go to the Games is pretty special. And then to get to go twice is pretty special really."

If past experience is anything to go by, John's parents will have been anxiously awaiting news of their son's progress. Ian says he's always on the internet, following the races, frustrated by time differences, watching as John goes up and down the leader board.

He says: "I've thought of the word pride. You know, what it means. And I'm just in awe of him sometimes. What he does and how he copes with his disability. Tremendous thing. I mean, they're all worthy of that, all these disabled sailors."

ParalympicsGB Chief Executive, Phil Lane, said: "To be selected for a Paralympic Games is the pinnacle of an athlete's career and an achievement that these athletes should be proud of."