As a kid sailing her P class dinghy on the upper reaches of the Otago Harbour, Jenny Armstrong wanted nothing more than to beat the boys.
“That’s what motivated me from the very beginning,” she says.
Fast forward almost 40 years, and although she’s is now an Olympic gold medallist and the new head of women’s sailing at Yachting New Zealand, Armstrong’s incentive – on the water at least – remains the same.
She is New Zealand’s reigning masters champion in the Laser Radial dinghy, having beaten a fleet of male and female sailors at the nationals sailed off a blustery Worser Bay in Wellington back in January.
“It was really fun beating the guys,” Armstrong laughs from her home in Dunedin.
Her other motivation was simply to get on the start line, coming back from knee surgery following a mountain bike crash. The conditions suited her to a tee.
“No races were sailed in less than 20 knots of breeze. I don’t race very much these days, only locally, so those are the conditions I know. Windy is okay with me,” she says.
This weekend, Armstrong is heading up to Picton to sail in the South Island Laser Radial champs. But she’ll also be taking the opportunity to talk to the younger sailors – in particular, the girls – about the pathways they can follow in sailing.
Armstrong can speak to them from her own fascinating personal experience.
From those early days racing out of Ravensbourne Boating Club in dinghies, the 13-year-old Armstrong wanted to be an Olympian. Back then, women had to sail against men at the Olympics – until the 470 women’s class was introduced at the 1988 Games, and Kiwis Leslie Egnot and Jan Shearer won Olympic silver.
When a women’s single-handed boat was first sailed, at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Armstrong made sure she was on the start line. She finishing a creditable fourth in the Europe class.
Eight years later, living across the Tasman, Armstrong switched nationalities and won Olympic gold in the 470 with Zimbabwean-born Belinda Stowell. It was Australia’s first sailing gold medal in 28 years.
Since then, she’s always worked in sailing – in yacht charters and brokerages, or as a coach. “There’s so much you can do in the industry, it’s not just about sailing,” she says. It’s a message she wants to get across to girls through her new role, putting Yachting NZ’s women and girls in sailing strategy into action.
“I think I understand what it’s like – and I know it’s not easy. But it gives me more street cred that I’ve done it,” she says.
Armstrong started as Yachting NZ’s manager of both the women’s sailing and Laser Radial programme this week. She takes over from Rosie Chapman, a British 470 sailor who had a couple of years in those roles, but is moving to the United States.
She has some “big, lofty goals” in the job – to get more girls sailing at the high performance level, and equally as important, keeping girls in the sport.
It’s something she’s already been working on at the grassroots in Dunedin, with her Dutch-born husband, Erik Stibbe, a renowned Olympic sailing coach.
“We’ve been running our sailing school at the Otago Yacht Club and last season there were more girls than boys. In fact, we’re having to rebuild the changerooms at the club because of that,” Armstrong says.
“We had our open day last weekend and it looks like we have similar numbers again this year. Now it’s about getting those girls to move from the learn to sail to the junior classes, and then build pathways that the juniors in the Optimists and Starlings can see and follow.”
So what’s brought on this wave of female interest in the sport? “Maybe it’s me a little bit, but mostly it’s about giving them a nice environment that’s really welcoming,” she says. “That’s a big thing for girls. A friendly culture really makes a difference in keeping them coming back.”
Armstrong retired from Olympic sailing after the 2004 Athens Games, and began coaching in Australia and Canada. She moved home to Dunedin with Stibbe and their two children in 2016.
Son Zach, now 15, and daughter Jaime, 12, are naturally yachties too. Zach is a competitive Laser Radial sailor who keeps his mum on her toes, and helped her prepare for this year’s national regatta.
Next week, Armstrong will be heading far from the sea and into the mountains to further her coaching knowledge.
She’s one of 12 emerging coaches in Te Hāpaitanga, High Performance Sport NZ’s development project to expand the female coaching talent pool. The next workshop is at Aoraki Mt Cook and weather permitting will include exploring a glacier or two.
“I guess this job is a natural progression from Te Hāpaitanga,” Armstrong says. “It’s been a pretty full-on learning experience. It’s given me a lot more confidence and made me realise I actually know more than I think I know.
“It’s also given me a bigger voice at Yachting New Zealand.”
It was Yachting NZ who encouraged Armstrong to apply for the $15,000 scholarship last year to further her coaching experiences. Before that she was a hired gun – coaching national youth teams on a casual basis; In 2019, she coached Seb Menzies and Blake McGlashan to successfully defend their youth world champions title in the 420 dinghy in Portugal.
She’s now helping Olivia Christie and Annabelle Rennie-Younger prepare for the Laser Radial world champs in Oman next month. “It’s their first time sailing internationally for two years,” says Armstrong, who won’t be going with them this time.
She’ll do her Yachting NZ roles remotely from Dunedin, working them around raising her family, and once the Covid levels are lowered, she’ll spend five days a month at the sport’s headquarters in Auckland.
“I haven’t been shy saying I will be a voice for sailing in the South Island and especially the regions,” she says. “I’m happy to be their voice.”
But it could mean having to pull back on her own sailing ambitions. “I still want to keep my hand in,” she says. “I’ve still got my eye on sailing at a Masters world championships some time.”
That drive to beat the boys can’t be dampened down.
