Britain’s Ian Stuart Warren, the newly-appointed coach of the Indian sailing team, said that his focus would be to fast-track the sailors into higher classes.
“It will take time to settle down for me, understand the system. The constraints we have, and how to move forward. But my immediate focus would be youth development and later on I would like to look at the Olympic classes,” said Warren.
“In that contest, the World Youth championships (likely) in Amman in December next year will be a good beginning, though we are not expecting any crazy results,” the 54-year-old told The Hindu in an interview, on Tuesday.
Warren, based in Melbourne, is a vastly experienced coach having trained the American’s women’s 470 team (J.J. Isler & Pease Glazer) to a silver medal in the build-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the USA and Czech women’s (’08 Olympics) teams and the Australia men’s (’04 Athens Olympics) team.
With a rich repertoire, Warren is not rushing into his India job. “I need to go through the motions, get as much information, get new sailors to the sport,” said Warren, whose contract with the Sports Authority of India runs till January 2021. Warren said he would shuttle between Chennai and Mumbai to get a feel of the Indian sailors and their requirements.
Though he differs with Peter Conway, his predecessor, in several ways, Warren said he would like to take Conway’s methods forward and imprint his own legacy.
“He (Pete) got [things] moving in the youth class. I would like to try to build on that move on to something else,” he said.
The 2018 Asian Games and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are, of course, in his agenda but he would like to take one step at a time.
