Marathon combined with chess: Sailor Sarah Douglas on how she aims to navigate her boat to Olympic podium

Sarah Douglas guided her small sailboat through the waters off Melbourne, Australia on a sunny morning in January 2020, intent on maximizing one of her final practice sessions ahead of the ILCA Laser Radial Women's World Championships.

Conditions weren't too different from the ones she figures she'll face in Marseille, France, when the women's laser radial class, which involves one sailor in one small boat, begins Olympic competition. Fairly calm water on a hot day, and no apparent reason to worry whether either of those variables would shift. Sailing teams employ meteorologists to handle those details, but a lifetime on the water endows sailors like Douglas, who began sailing at age seven, a sixth sense about the weather.

The temperature dipped and the wind picked up, and Douglas, the 2019 Pan Am Games gold medallist, knew it was her versus the conditions.

Wind gusts zoomed past 55 km/h while the mercury nosedived, from 30 C to 20 C, and headed even lower. This practice session, Douglas knew, was about to get tougher.

Then the sky darkened, and the wind blew even harder. When it topped 80 km/h, Douglas' focus shifted from salvaging her workout to keeping her boat, which is roughly four metres long and weighs about 60 kilograms, upright. Douglas, who stands 6 feet tall, has the strength and ballast to steady her small boat in a wide range of conditions, but this sudden storm forced her to abandon that plan, too.

When her coach, Vaughn Harrison, pulled alongside in his motorboat, Douglas leapt into it, leaving her brand new sailboat to drift and somersault in the turbulent water. The boat rolled again, becoming ensnared in the ropes, called sheets in sailing, that tether the sail to the mast and the boom.

Then, just as