Rosie Chapman is succeeding in her mission to get more Kiwi girls sailing, she tells Suzanne McFadden, in the first of a series on female coaches and leaders making a difference in high performance sport.
It’s fitting that one of Rosie Chapman’s first boats was a dinghy called Trial and Error. She admits that’s exactly the path she took early in her sailing journey.
She obviously got it right, going on to sail for Great Britain in the women’s 470, and now coaching the top Kiwi yachtswomen in the Laser Radial class.
But lots of young girls don’t find the right path. Statistics show the number of females who belong to yachting and boating clubs in New Zealand drops from around 30 percent at youth level to 20 percent at senior level.
So it’s also Chapman’s mission to make sure Kiwi women and girls don’t find themselves muddling around in boats - through trial and error – then dropping out of the sport all together.
“The big thing we’re working on at the moment is getting more girls into sailing,” says Chapman, whose other role is women’s sailing manager at Yachting New Zealand, leading the implementation of their women and girls in sailing strategy.
“One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle is working on the female pathway through sailing – we’re finding that some of the drop-off for girls is when they can’t see a pathway in the sport.
“So we’re helping girls all the way from junior up to youth and Olympic classes. We’re talking to them to see what’s the best fit for them at the next step, directing them into the right boats. And maybe helping them into a double-handed boat rather than sailing by themselves.
“It’s really important that we connect with them now at a young age so we don’t lose them.”
Young girls need to see those pathways leading right through to professional sailing, where it’s always been difficult for women to find a foothold.
But with global events like the round-the-world Ocean Race and the Sail GP series now stipulating there must be women in their crews, the pathways are becoming clearer.
At last month’s Optimist dinghy nationals, Chapman found girls “buzzing” over Liv Mackay and Erica Dawson being included in Peter Burling and Blair Tuke’s NZL SailGP team.
“With Sail GP going that way, hopefully one day the America’s Cup will too. Peter and Blair are pioneering in their decision-making, so hopefully they will say 'Hey we need to get women on board the boat'.”
Since Chapman started implementing the women and girls strategy 18 months ago, she’s already seen positive change with more young women taking up the sport and more sticking with it at teenage level. Like she did.
Chapman grew up in Cornwall, and learned to sail with her dad in a Mirror, one of the world’s most popular double-handed dinghies. She was racing straight out of the blocks, moving from crewing to steering before kicking her dad out for a younger crew.
“I got talent-spotted at a young age for the British sailing team. I moved up through their junior programmes, but a lot of it was by trial and error,” she says.
She eventually found her place sailing for Britain in the Laser Radial before joining Hannah Mills in the women’s 470. While Mills went on to become the reigning Olympic champion in the class, and is now on Sir Ben Ainslie’s Sail GP team, Chapman had to end her sailing days prematurely, after undergoing a series of abdominal surgeries.
“It was really gnarly stuff on the abdominals, so it became too hard to sail,” she says.
Out of that, though, she built resilience. And she changed course, pursuing a career as a coach instead.
Chapman began coaching in Canada before being lured to Houston as the Laser performance coach at one of the United States’ top regional sailing programmes. One of her sailors became a two-time world youth champion, and Chapman was named the US national coach of the year in 2018.
Then an opportunity to work with women’s sailing at Yachting NZ appealed to her and she moved south in 2019.
“We may be all coming to terms with different barriers, but you can be in a totally different sport and still help each other."
Last year, Chapman was chosen to be part of High Performance Sport NZ’s new $2.7m initiative to get more women into coaching and leadership roles at the apex of their sports.
She's one of eight female coaches and leaders in the 18-month Women in High Performance Sport residency fund, aimed at accelerating talented women into high performance leadership and coaching positions in the country’s major sports.
The fund has allowed Chapman the chance to develop her leadership skills – which has been crucial for leading the women and girls sailing strategy. She’s been attending a leadership programme with an equal split of male and female leaders.
“It’s given me the opportunity to be in a workshop with some incredible male and female high performance leaders to grow and learn with them,” she says.
“It’s funny. I didn’t necessarily ever see myself as one day being a leader. But I love to be out there making decisions, and being able to help more than just the sailors.
“I love my coaching, but it would be great to eventually step away and head more towards the bigger picture.”
What Chapman has also gained from the Women in High Performance Sport programme is a new personal network of female leaders.
She's even taken one of them - New Zealand Football Future Ferns assistant coach Natalie Lawrence - out on the water on her coaching boat, to watch her at work with the Laser Radial sailors.
“Just having a network of women around you who support you and who face the same barriers as you do has been absolutely massive,” she says. “We may be all coming to terms with different barriers, but you can be in a totally different sport and still help each other."
Chapman has found new challenges in New Zealand, with fewer females coaching in the high performance space. She's one of only two, with Olympic gold medallist Jo Aleh.
“For Jo and I, having two women at the table helping to make decisions has been really big," she says. "And I’m lucky to work closely with people who are open to listening and having discussions when they’re raised.”
As she toils to get more girls sailing, Chapman says the ultimate goal would be to have New Zealand sailing teams of 50 percent male and 50 percent female sailing at future Olympics. “And to have 50:50 male and female medals – but to have more women medals would be amazing,” she says. “That’s something I’m really passionate about.”
She also wants to build a world-class women’s single-handed team. The last time a New Zealand woman sailed the Laser Radial at an Olympics was Sara Winther in London, 2012.
Olivia Christie nabbed New Zealand a spot in the Laser Radial for the Tokyo Olympics, by finishing 47th at the last world championships. But neither she nor Annabel Rennie-Younger, New Zealand's other contender in the class, could reach the ‘top 10 finish’ standard for selection.
“The girls are now planning to go to the worlds in October," Chapman says. "And we’re trying to build up the numbers in the Laser Radial class. It’s the hardest women’s Olympic boat – it’s very physical and mentally challenging - so we’re trying to keep sailors in the boat as well.
“The Paris 2024 Olympics will be the goal – to have a strong Laser Radial representative, as well as sailors in all the women’s classes.”
With Chapman's help, that kind of equality now looks to be on the not-so-distant horizon.
