He has been predicting the weather for over half a century. He has predicted it in the last ten editions of the America's Cup, in nine Olympic Games and in countless world championships and other regattas. Roger Badham wanted to retire, perhaps before the edition of Barcelona, but it was hinted to Grant Dalton and the current top F-1 of the sea did not hesitate: "If there is no you are, we will also call you every morning to give us the prediction", he explains with a laugh. So, it continues at the foot of the canyon. His maxim, applicable to time and to all other things, is not to give much information, but what is given should be accurate.
In the Emirates Team New Zealand, where Roger has been a fundamental piece for more than twenty years, he is known as Clouds. He is excited to look at the sky and is excited by storms, "especially in the Mediterranean", he points out. But now his work runs more between mathematical models. A lot of data and many hours of computation to delineate predictions at minute intervals and in incredibly small spaces, the regatta zone.
"Prediction has evolved a lot over the last few years and also the America's Cup has changed, now it's incredibly faster," he says. Material changes, the catamarans, then the foils (which lift the hull of the boats out of the water)... The San Francisco edition, in 2013, changed everything. "Now the boats arrive at 40 to 50 knots, which is equivalent to a speed of about 100 kilometers per hour; before they were slow and predictions at a hundred meters were useful... Now they cover these distances in seconds, it's a different scale”.
Roger Badham prepares models and makes micro-scale predictions. The more defined and specific, the better. "Computer models are very good on a global scale, they can take a good picture on a large scale, they are very good for phenomena that cross the Atlantic, for example, but on a small scale they are still not good enough... They will be! But not yet, there is too much chaos, too many variables that must be taken into account", he explains. However, he believes that a prediction can never be one hundred percent correct, "we are not gods".
He does not remember the times he has been to Barcelona. There are many of them. "Probably the first was in 1992, at the Olympic Games." He settled in the city four months before they started to study the weather. In fact, he has worked almost all over the world: the United States, northern and southern Europe, Great Britain, Japan, Korea and, of course, Australia and New Zealand. "And there are always phenomena that surprise you", he says. He is in love with the Mediterranean, "with its winter and its summer, because the sunset breeze is very different to August or the transition months, when the temperatures change, because the topography is particularly decisive... The Alps , the Pyrenees, the Gulf of León...". His eagerness for precision makes him talk about the Ebro valley and the Tramuntana region.
He was more passionate about sailing than meteorology, studied Mathematics and Physics (Ph.D. in Numerical Methods in Meteorology) and worked first doing weather forecasting on the radio before establishing himself as a freelancer for companies and sports teams, always forecasting (he was a pioneer) for navigation, which remains his great passion. However, for some years now he has also been working for F-1 with Ferrari. "At sea, 90% of the prediction is determined by the wind, its strength, its direction... On the F-1 circuit, there are other variables that are also decisive, such as temperature or rain" , explain. At the moment, the prediction is passed daily to the team, which is now training in Barcelona, from New Zealand and hopes to come to the city next year.
