At 27 he’s already competed at the Olympic Games and won the Volvo Ocean Race, yet Adil Khalid still carries the weight of an expectant nation on his shoulders at the ASAF Asian Sailing Championships.
The event began at Abu Dhabi’s Corniche yesterday, with more than 100 sailors competing in six different classes for nine Rio 2016 spots.
What Khalid has achieved in his young career so far is astonishing. He was the first Emirati to compete at the Olympics when he entered the Laser category in Beijing in 2008, aged just 19, while he was also the only UAE sailor to complete one of sport’s toughest events, the Volvo Ocean Race.
He’d only just turned 23 when the 2011-12 VOR got underway and was 26 when he won the 2014-15 version aboard Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing last June.
Good steady winds. ..Laser and the RSX launching now...#asiansailing #asiansailingchampionships pic.twitter.com/CZttjvrjIw
— ASAF Updates (@ASAFUpdates) March 8, 2016
Now his attention turns back to the Olympics and his first love, dinghy racing, competing in the Laser Standard category on home waters this week, the same category in which competed for the UAE at the Beijing Games.
“It’s really important for the UAE to get back to the Olympics again,” said Khalid.
“For the UAE to qualify again would be great. If I got a spot, it would be really good for the sailing community. We have more support now and people care more about sailing so this is why I have to do it.”
Khalid did not have the best of starts yesterday, finishing 23rd and 20th in his two races to sit 23rd out of 40 overall, and he knows he needs to do better over the next four days to make his Rio dream a reality.
“I have to finish inside the top two if I want to qualify. I messed up in two races, but tomorrow will be a new day for me. We have 12 races in total and hopefully I will be in the top five in each. It’s going to be hard but I will do my best.”
Although he is able to fall back on a pretty impressive CV to aid his Rio cause, Khalid admits he has not been out on the water much
recently compared to many of his opponents this week.
“I only started sailing again about three or four months after the Volvo,” he said. “It’s not enough, but of course my experience in Beijing and from the VOR can help me.”
The opening day of the championships was almost abandoned yesterday after a thunderstorm bombarded the capital city for several hours, and despite enjoying home advantage, Khalid knows the weather will play a huge part this week.
“It was crazy,” he said of the opening day’s racing. “The wind was coming from different directions. I know the water very well so I was thinking I could handle it. All of a sudden the wind changed directions. It was really bad.
“It’s tricky with the weather. It’s shifting all the time and you can go from first place to last very quickly. I think the racing will go right down to the last few races on Saturday.”
