Tokyo Olympics: Aussie sailor Mara Stransky fortunate her home during isolation is on the water
It certainly helps that when Mara Stransky was forced into isolation that her home was on the water ... literally. Moored on Moreton Bay with her parents, the Aussie laser sailor has a big backyard to play in.
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Life in isolation is hardly uncharted waters for Queensland sailor Mara Stransky as she prepares for her Tokyo Olympics assault on the yacht she calls home.
Stransky, 21, was among the last Australian athletes to book her ticket to Tokyo when it was announced in March that the 2020 Olympics would be delayed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Leading up to the selection it was really touch and go, waiting until the last minute to see what the selection committee had decided,” said Stransky, who earned a spot in the Laser Radial class.
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“I had time to go to Sydney for one last camp and then come home to Brisbane. I got back into Brisbane the day before the border closed.”
Since then, Stransky has been largely moored on Moreton Bay with her father, Andrew, a former Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race competitor, and her mother, Carolyn in their family yacht.
“I’m pretty fortunate because not a whole lot changes, apart from the fact I’m actually at home,” she said.
“It’s the pretty ideal set-up in a lot of ways because it’s normal for us to stock up for a couple of weeks and then go off and do our own thing, just my parents and I.
“We went out to the reef for a while because it’s really good conditions that are quite similar to Japan, so I trained out there for a while.
“I’ve got a gym, I’ve got a bike, I’ve got everything I need with me. Yeah it’s different but I’m pretty well set up for it.
Having only started sailing dinghies internationally three years ago, Stransky was confident the decision to postpone the Olympics until 2021 would work in her favour.
“We did do a lot of yacht racing on our boat up in Asia for three seasons and then we came back to Australia so I could finish school and we kept racing the boat, so I’d done quite a lot of yacht racing but I had never stepped foot in a dinghy,’’ she said.
“The Olympics were a distant dream for quite a while until about a year ago when I placed seventh at the European titles, and I thought ‘maybe it is realistic’,” she said.
“As one of the younger competitors in sailing, the delay definitely advantages me compared with others.
“It’s a huge opportunity. For me, the delay is almost best case.”
Originally published as Tokyo Olympics: Aussie sailor Mara Stransky fortunate her home during isolation is on the water