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» Cover Stories » SAIL AWAY – MAYA PODESTASAIL AWAY – MAYA PODESTA
Young sailor Maya Podesta on life since becoming a medical doctor, being a woman in a man’s world – and the race towards the Olympics. Text by Sandra Aquilina
While most young women her age are waking up bleary-eyed or settling down to go out with the family, Maya Podesta appears sprightly and energetic on a Sunday morning. She even suggests meeting before our 11 o’ clock appointment and can’t make the afternoon because of sailing training. Exuding energy and sportiness, it seems unlikely that she was out partying the previous night, just one of the sacrifices she has to make since she has decided to take on sailing seriously and is now eyeing the next Olympics.
“It’s just become a way of life,” she says, shrugging her shoulders, as we settle down at a seaside cafe. “Now I can’t imagine my life without sailing.” True, there is a lot of sacrifice, she admits. “Something in your life has to give – my social life suffers the most. It’s difficult to go out if you have sailing the following morning. And I also have to take a very disciplined approach to my fitness and training routine and my eating and weight.”
Still, the sacrifices seem to have paid off. As Malta’s foremost female sailor – and one of the few women in what is still very much a man’s sport – she won a silver medal at the GSSE in Cyprus in 2009. “That was what made me see that I could do it.”
Now the 28-year-old sailor – who also graduated as a medical doctor – has set her sight on the next Olympics. To qualify, she needs to place among the first 26 out of 60 nations at the ISAF World Championships which will be held next month in Perth, Australia. Failing that, 13 more nations will qualify or get their slot in next year’s Laser Radial world championship in May in Germany.
Having been selected as one of the athletes to form part of the Emerging Nations Programme – an initiative to assist developing sailing nations qualify for the Olympic Games – Maya has already sailed in the racing area in Perth at an ENP camp earlier this year. “It was tough,” she says with her characteristic understatedness. “I was literally taking one day at a time and at a certain point fatigue starts setting in.” It’s also tough to be so far from home, she says.
Still Australia has special significance for Maya. It was here that 11 years ago she watched the Sydney 2000 opening ceremony as a youth camp participant. The then 18-year-old watched the athletes with admiration and goosebumps. “I decided that I wanted to be down there.”
It’s a long way to have come in just a few years. Maya started sailing late – at 14 years old. While her father and brothers had long been sailing, Maya spent 14 years going to ballet and swimming competitively until she decided that her real love was the sea. “I have an attraction to the sea, I can’t describe it.” When she finally switched sports, she rose quickly through the ranks. Her Sixth Form and University years were spent trying to achieve a balance between academic work and sailing. “At Sixth form I had lectures on Saturdays which would sometimes coincide with the races.” Which one took precedence? “The races.”
When we meet, she has just returned from the Rolex Middle Sea race, where she sailed with her dad and her two younger brothers as well as a number of friends. Their boat – Elusive St. Regis – placed eleventh. On a 45-foot boat, you never take more than five or six steps at one go, says Maya, so sailing with family helps. “Five days with 11 people – there’s no escape,” she laughs. “Thankfully we all get along well! There are moments when you’re cold, you’re wet, you’re miserable – but when the race is over and you’re having a cold beer, you forget the hard moments and you’re ready to do it all again.”
And she’s not exaggerating either. For Maya, this was also her eleventh consecutive Middle Sea race, including the memorable “very windy” 2007 one during which only 15 boats made it to the finish line. Elusive was the first Maltese boat to make it back – with no damage and no injuries. “Many people told us we were crazy to continue that race – but we were very prudent.”
Still, some moments out at sea can be terrifying. In 2004, while sailing in the seas between Capri and Lipari, the boat Maya was on was caught in a storm. “It was about four in the afternoon, the sky suddenly just went black and the wind rose from 20 to 40 knots – the waves were coming from up there.” But having to deal with the situation – rather than just watching – helps the nerves, she says pragmatically. The crew were shocked to learn later that a crew member lost his life and the race was annulled.
But the storms are not even the biggest challenges. It’s the day-to-day training, the preparation that is the real obsession. With a training regime that includes running every other day, gym sessions three or four times a week and as much time on the water as possible, it’s difficult to even think of finding time for anything else. If she isn’t racing in international regattas, she goes to sailing training camps abroad whenever possible – whole weeks when all you do is eat, sail and sleep, she says. With such a routine, much has had to be put on hold, including her work duties as a doctor and her Masters degree in Public Health Medicine.
Meanwhile, an Olympic Solidarity Scholarship from the International Olympic Committee, the 20-20 scheme, her own savings, as well as support from the Malta Olympic Committee, Malta Sailing Federation, Kunsill Malti ghall-Isport and some generous individuals enable her to get by. But she admits to missing the atmosphere of hospital life. Training competitively can be lonely – and out there on the water you are alone with yourself. Meanwhile she tries to sail as much as possible with her two coaches – the Maltese GSSE gold medalist Mario Aquilina and an Irish trainer Roger Craig. “I need to make sailing second nature.”
Still the grueling training does take its toll. Over the years she has had to battle a number of chronic overuse injuries, including torn ligaments, tendonitis, thrombosis, and a shoulder subluxation during a capsize – which she put back in place on her own while at sea. She jokes about it. “It hasn’t yet got to the stage where my physiotherapist is my best friend…”
The rewards, however, can be thrilling. “When you’re surfing the waves and there’s a good wind, the boat just hums,” she says contentedly. And if she makes it to the Olympics, she would have beaten athletes coming from countries with a much stronger sports infrastructure. Although Malta has perfect raw materials for sailing – nice winds, warm climate – other countries provide much more focus. “I’m kind of coming from nowhere, I don’t have anything to prove,” she says. Then, a flash of determination. “But I want to prove to myself that I can do it as well as make Malta proud. It’s a nice feeling representing your country at high level sporting events.”
Has she learnt to cope with failure? “The important thing is to keep going – otherwise you lose the boost.” Of course there are times when you are doing badly – perhaps after a race – when you just want to pack it up and lead a normal life, she says. She looks out to the sea. “But I just keep getting drawn back to it.”
Photography by Alan Carville – Art Direction by John Mizzi – Make-up by Chantal Busuttil (www.cbmakeupandsfx.com)
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Posted by Sandra Aquilina on November 4, 2011. Filed under Cover Stories.
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