Aleh/Powrie Campaign Update

New Zealand's 2012 Olympic Gold Medallists Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie - otherwise known as Team Jolly - give an update on the aftermath of the months since winning their gold medal and their campaign onwards to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil.

"Hello All!

Firstly, we wanted to wish you all a very Happy New Year! And follow up with a bit of an update…

It has been a rather different time for us the last few months, it’s been crazily busy, but not so much the sailing and training busy that we are used to.

We have visited countless schools and yacht clubs all over New Zealand, been to rather a few school prize givings, numerous corporate events, a few sports award evenings and even met some royals! Our medals have passed through thousands of hands, and overall it has all been rather a bit of a whirlwind end of the year!

We have met people from all over New Zealand, and have been truly humbled by the reception we have had everywhere we have been. We are constantly amazed by hearing from people about how they saw our race on TV, and how emotional it was for them. It’s probably a good thing we never knew how many people were watching that medal race, or the outcome may have been a little different!!

So when Christmas finally came around, we were rather relieved to finally finish our ‘official duties’ with one last appearance on Breakfast TV, and finally have some real time out, time with our families, and just time away from all the hype that has been non stop since we won gold in London.

But even while we have been recovering, it has been all go, with the announcement of the 2013 New Year Honours, as we were made Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), which was rather amazing, and a huge honour, as well as pretty cool that we have some letters to go after our names!!

A few days later the finalists for the 50th Halberg Awards were announced, and we are proud to say that we have been selected as one of the five finalists in the ‘Team of the Year’ category, and even better, our wonderful coach Nathan Handley has made the final four in the ‘Coach of the Year’ section.

So now it is back to the drawing board, we have announced our intent to continue towards Rio in 2016, and it is not a decision we have taken lightly, we cannot simply do what we did last time and expect to come home with another medal. So before we leave New Zealand in May, to start our European campaign for 2013, we have a lot of work to do. Figuring out what we need to keep the same, and what we need to change, after all, we are in a far different place to where we were when we started four years ago, and Rio presents very different challenges to London.

We just have to say how grateful we are for all the support we have received these past few months, for the amazing people we have met, who told us they just wanted to find a way to help us out, we are looking forward to some more great times over the next four years!

We are back into training next week, so that means getting back in the gym, back on the bike and back out on the water, which will most likely be a bit of a shock to the system! But looking forward to it all the same!

Thank you!

Jo & Polly"

More Information:
Team Jolly website
Twitter