Interview: Jonathan Lobert, “Sharing Is Winning!”

Winning Culture, Stress Management, Handling Failure, Fast and Multi-Factor Decision-Making… How Do You Stay Motivated Day After Day in an Ultra-Demanding Environment?

With 280 days at sea each year, an Olympic medal, and an outstanding competitive record, Jonathan Lobert shares the keys that led him to these exceptional results.

Determination, humility, sensory development, sharing, and open-mindedness are all qualities that a long-lasting champion must cultivate.

Jonathan Lobert, The Birth of a Champion

Hello Jonathan, you have an exceptional career in Olympic sailing. Can you briefly tell us how you got there?

When I started sailing, I was 7 years old on the Saône River in Mâcon — proof that you don’t have to be Breton to become a great racing sailor. I played many sports, but none truly appealed to me enough to fully commit. My parents enrolled me in this sailing club, I learned my first maneuvers, and I immediately loved it. Being alone on my boat, making it move, positioning myself relative to others… It was a small club, so I was able to compete very quickly. The first time, I finished last — and then I progressed rapidly. I loved leaving for entire weekends with my friends to race, spending full days on the water — it was amazing, and being outdoors did me a lot of good.

Then in 2000, by chance one morning I turned on the TV to watch the Olympic Games — and luckily, it was sailing. It was the final race of the week in the Laser class, a rematch of the Atlanta Games where Robert Scheidt had beaten Ben Ainslie. This time, Ben Ainslie won ahead of the Brazilian — it was a true match race. I had just come back from the Optimist World Championships where I finished 21st, and I said to myself: “I want to go to the Olympics too — and win a medal.”

The beautiful part of the story is that 12 years later, at the London Olympic Games, I found myself on the podium with Ben Ainslie, the sailor who had inspired me.

How Did You Train to Reach That Level?

Training is, above all, technical. It involves a great deal of repetition. Repeating maneuvers until they become almost automatic — no longer needing to think to perform the movement — always searching for the perfect gesture. There is also extensive feedback work with the coach, comparing what he observes with what I feel on the boat.

The challenge in sailing is that every maneuver can change depending on wind, waves, and water conditions. Technical mastery frees up the ability to make extremely fast decisions in relation to opponents, wind, and overall strategy.

When sailing, we constantly collect information. Experience in sailing develops the ability to process information, recognize previously experienced situations, react very quickly, and position oneself rapidly. As you progress, you become more and more of an expert and gain the ability to position yourself optimally.

Feeling Your Environment and Listening to Your Sensations

You talk about perceived information and sensations — how do you develop this heightened sense of perception?

Sensation is essential for us, to gain a fine sensitivity to what might happen.

It’s the sense of touch through the hands, feeling what the tiller and the sheet transmit.
It’s feeling everything that is in direct contact with the boat — the body, the feet.

We also do many blindfolded training exercises to develop hearing, feel the wind on the face, and sharpen indicators we tend to forget.

From the outside, someone who doesn’t know we’re blindfolded can’t tell the difference. These sessions are extremely mentally demanding because they require intense focus and concentration.

We often work by blocking one parameter — for example, downwind, locking the tiller and only adjusting boat balance and sail trim to move the boat forward. The same applies to equipment development: one sailor keeps identical equipment while the other runs specific tests.

Are these highly developed senses still useful to you now that you’ve left competitive sailing?

Yes. My wife often tells me that I’m extremely attentive to small details. It gives me valuable insight into the people in front of me and their body language. It helps me tremendously in business to sense what’s happening and to pick up on unspoken emotions. I’m very tuned in to my environment, which also gives me strong empathy.

Humility and Preparation as Drivers of Success

You once told me that understanding the emotional state of the other person is essential for being fully effective in the coach–athlete relationship. Can you explain how managing emotions together can also be a key factor between business partners?

Very concretely, with my coach François Le Castrec during the 2012 Olympic Preparation, we quickly chose to focus deeply on our duo and our communication.

During races, he is in a Zodiac boat and I am on my boat — so we can’t communicate. We can only talk between races, and the time is very limited. It’s therefore essential to say the right things at the right time, to reinforce very good approaches or to correct what isn’t working. The idea was to eliminate emotional interference and communicate clearly about objectives and strategy. If I am frustrated after a poor race, I still need to be able to listen — and he must be able to speak to me.

We learned together how to manage each other’s stress. On the final day of the Olympics, he was very stressed, but we had prepared and anticipated that moment. It was OK for me — we talked about it, and I was able to head out on the water calmly.

We learned to truly understand each other so we could work better together, and above all to accept that the other person might not be at their best without it affecting the quality of the work or experience.

You also spoke about humility. What does humility mean to you, and why is it so important at the highest level?

In sailing, humility is often learned the hard way. You can start with the best settings, think everything is perfect — and then realize you missed something, and all your hard work is wiped out. You can be beaten by a competitor who trained less, who is less prepared, but who seized the right opportunity.

We learn that we cannot always win and that we cannot control what others do — so we focus on what we control: ourselves.

We operate in an environment where we know nature is stronger than us. It’s a constantly changing, living environment. There are basic safety rules that must always be respected.

Sharing in Order to Progress

You support the idea that “Sharing is winning.” What does that mean in practice?

I am convinced that sharing enables progress. When you master a technique that took time and effort to acquire, transmitting it helps you formalize it, identify areas for improvement, and discover new perspectives through questioning. The person in front of you won’t apply it exactly the same way — and their adaptations can enrich your own method.

Sharing allows everyone to grow together. You don’t lose anything when you give — you become even more knowledgeable. Giving means growing, developing, becoming better.

When someone adopts what you created, you immediately see what they do differently — and you can integrate it into your own technique. And you always stay one step ahead, because the original foundation is yours.

The moment you shift into a mindset of transmission, you only gain.

You free yourself from psychological pressure and stress. That’s how you gain a psychological edge. The same applies in business with competition.

This objectivity is essential to build the right strategy and continue improving. You must neither underestimate nor overestimate yourself.

Motivation and Facing Failure

So how do you re-mobilize motivation?

It’s linked to the overall objective — where you want to go in the long term.

My goal of always becoming the best possible in order to win an Olympic medal gave me the strength to re-mobilize many times.

And what about failure?

Failure is simply additional information that allows you to reach another level. Behind failure, there’s something to validate, analyze, and adjust.

It’s not negative — it’s data.

Discovery and Open-Mindedness

Exploring is fundamental. Always staying open, constantly gathering information, analyzing it, and transforming it into learning.

On the water, we have no tools — our only sensors are our eyes and sensations.

In daily life, I have the same approach to exploration — in cooking, for example, I taste everything, I experiment, I discover.

Objectives and New Challenges

Yes, having a clear goal is essential. It means knowing exactly what you must achieve that day.

The final goal plays a major emotional role. In business, money is often placed in the wrong position. You must clarify what is a means — and what is the end.

High goals are built from a series of achievable small ones.

The engine is vision — that’s what fuels the machine every day.

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