Since the ILCA 6’s (formerly the Laser Radial) addition to the Olympic Games in 2008, the class has remained the crucible of elite women’s singlehanded racing. Anna Tunnicliffe-Tobias, who won the first Radial gold medal in 2008, remains the only US Sailing Team athlete to reach the ILCA podium. With three-time Olympian Paige Railey bowing out of international ILCA competition after Tokyo, a strong squad of understudies has emerged from her shadow, including the talented 22-year-old Charlotte Rose, who has positioned herself as an heir apparent and a true contender for this summer’s Olympic Regatta. First, however, she must battle for the berth at the US team’s ­winner-goes trials in February. 

Despite being one of the youngest top performers in the ILCA 6 class, Rose is no newcomer to championship sailing. Having campaigned full time for less than two years, Rose has made her presence known—qualifying the US for the 2024 Games by finishing fifth at the 2023 Allianz Sailing World Championships in August and recently posting a personal best with a silver medal at the ILCA 6 Women’s World Championship in January.

Growing up in Houston, Rose has held Olympic aspirations since childhood, fueled by an unquenchable ambition. “Even before I started sailing, I was always a competitive kid,” Rose says. “I remember watching the 2012 Olympics and seeing ­athletes like Michael Phelps and saying, ‘I want to be one of them one day.’”

A product of the ­learn-to-sail camp at Houston YC, Rose began racing the ILCA at age 13, joined the US Olympic Development Program at 15, and quickly ascended the ranks of the youth sailing circuit. After competing in international events during her high school years, Rose made her big break when she won back-to-back gold medals at the Youth Sailing World Championships in 2017 and 2018.

“Before 2017, I was never winning national or North American titles, so I had no expectation of being selected for the Youth Worlds,” Rose says. “Winning in 2017 and again closer to home in 2018 are definitely the two events I am most proud of.”

While continuing to campaign, Rose also sailed at Jacksonville University, where Head Coach Jon Faudree says that she displayed incredible levels of talent and dedication. “Charlotte has an ­elite-athlete drive that goes above and beyond the average person, whether that be in the gym, studying, or just being able to sail the number of days she does,” Faudree says. “Her drive to just get up and do it over and over again was very impressive. The vast majority of us burn out after spending that much time on the water, so I think that her ability to maintain a high level of competitiveness is what makes her an elite athlete. And it shows in her results in heavy air. If it gets above 12 knots, she’s unbeatable.”

While Rose’s work ethic and ambitions make her a force to be reckoned with on the water, overcoming the expectations she places on herself as she competes in an incredibly unforgiving fleet has been one of her greatest challenges.

“When I first started campaigning, my outlook was very results-based, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect,” Rose says. “I’ve been working with my coach, Alex Saldanha, on how we communicate with each other on the water, figuring out what type of information I like and not picking apart too much about what happened [when debriefing on the water between races].”

Breaking out of an all-or-nothing mentality during racing has allowed her to further dial in her renowned skills in heavy air. “I think that a lot of people, in heavy air, think that they need to hike at 100 percent all the time. Then they go down to 50 percent when they get tired,” Rose says. “I’ve been working on conditioning myself to stay at a certain percent a lot of the time, maybe 80 percent, so I can keep moving. Having consistency in the heavy wind really helps me maintain energy for a longer period.”

While some experts believe that modern-day Olympic athletes are better served deferring college, Rose utilized her time at Jacksonville to further develop a championship mentality and a better understanding of the variables she can control on the racecourse. “We talked a lot about failure and how to accept it, learn from it, and move on more quickly,” Faudree says. “In this sport, there are so many variables that are out of your control, so we focused on how to move on when something like that happens. Putting bad situations behind you is really difficult for elite sailors to do; you work so much more than everybody else, so when things go wrong, it is tough to handle when you have that much drive.”

Beyond refining her ­mental game, Rose says that her ­experience sailing in collegiate venues has served her well. “At the Worlds in August, we had a bunch of current, and I sailed on a river that had a bunch of current in college, so I had that in my toolbox going,” Rose says. “Even though it’s a completely different type of sailing, I knew how current worked and where to put myself on the course. That’s something Coach Faudree taught me well.”

As the Olympic Trials draw closer, Rose has stepped up her game on the racecourse—and has the results to prove it. After finishing second at the ILCA Worlds, just over a month before the trials, she now feels that she has the skillset required to qualify for the Games.

US Sailing Team Laser Radial/ILCA Olympic Past Results

• Tokyo 2020: Paige Railey (37)
• Rio 2016: Paige Railey (10)
• London 2012: Paige Railey (8)
• Beijing 2008: Anna Tunnicliffe (Gold)

“I didn’t feel a lot of ­pressure going into this year’s world championship because we’d already qualified the country for the Games, so I just wanted to practice my routine and practice how I’m going to go into the trials,” Rose says. “I was focusing on controlling what I can control and thinking about my performance race by race. I felt really good in my fitness and my sailing. It doesn’t feel real that I finished second at a world championship. I feel super ­motivated and very confident.”

With the opportunity to achieve her lifelong Olympic dream within reach, Rose says that the feeling is surreal. “I’m definitely feeling nerves and think that this is going to be the hardest regatta of my life,” Rose says. “It’s crazy to think that this is the pinnacle of my career, but I’m just going back to focusing on myself and knowing that this is what I need to do.”

Facing off against 21 of America’s top ILCA 6 sailors in a nine-day competition is a far departure from the normal format of big-fleet international ILCA racing, and will require Rose and all others to be able to put it all on the table throughout a brutal marathon regatta. 

“The smaller fleet will mean that getting good starts and keeping speed up will be very important,” Rose says. “It’s going to be a really long week, and that will definitely get to everyone’s head. I think my mindset for the trials is that whoever is able to keep their head on straight for the longest and keep it cool will probably win.”

A ticket to Paris is the ultimate goal, of course, but Rose, 22, has plenty more years to hone her power and poise. Should she come up short in Miami in February, there’s Los Angeles in 2028—a tidy two decades removed from Tunnicliffe’s podium glory.

The post The Rise of Charlotte Rose appeared first on Sailing World.

The top-three teams in the standings had traded places in the top 10 on the world stage for three years. They had trained together and qualified the US for the Games this past summer in the Netherlands. And all three pairs had swallowed the bitter pill of missing country qualification in the 49er for the Tokyo Olympics. Now, having been nearly tied on points for a week, they had only one goal—to beat one another.

By this point in the regatta, Ian Barrows and Hans Henken, ­teammates since summer 2020, had virtually secured the berth. But on the sail out to the racecourse, they followed their usual routine of hoisting the spinnaker and testing how far they could put the pedal down while running downwind in a big breeze, a difficult point of sail in the for 49er no matter how talented the crew.

“We were 100 percent comfortable on starboard, no problem,” Henken recalls of their assessment that morning. “When we jibed to port, I had to flog the kite three times in a row. I told Ian, ‘Somebody is going to capsize today.’”

They knew right then that, tactically, port jibe would not be ideal to attack or try to outmaneuver another boat. It was a subtle observation, a slightly different shape of the murky blue-green chop heading in one direction. Their boathandling was flawless all week, and with a 2-2-3 score line on the last day, they won the 21-race trials by only 3 points.

Twenty-plus knots is the limit of 49er sailing. And they were right up against it on the final day of the US Olympic Team 49er selection ­trials on Miami’s Biscayne Bay, with eight teams and only a handful of races remaining to decide who would be racing next summer in Marseille, France, the Olympic venue.

“It’s expert-level; it’s strategic how hard to push,” says Charlie McKee, their regatta coach and a multiple Olympic medalist who, with his brother Jonathan, earned a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics, the year the 49er was introduced to the Games. “It’s not a fear of capsizing. The fact that Hans does the risk/reward that easily in his head, that says something about him. They can be analytical, but they also have so much confidence in each other. It’s not false like, ‘I got this.’ It’s from all the systematic training they have done with their squad coach, Mark Asquith.”

What transpired during that tedious series in Miami was the culmination of nearly a decade of dedication by three teams collectively aspiring to reach their peak abilities and one day make it to the Olympics. The photos on land after the final races in Miami revealed a depleted group of sailors, friends and competitors who represent the first true medal hopes for the US in the 49er since the early 2000s.

This squad, which shuffled partners after Tokyo, produced Barrows and Henken. And despite Henken’s near-career-ending injury months before the trials, the pair, winners of the 2023 Pan American Games, are now poised to achieve the seemingly impossible task of medaling at their first Olympic appearance. Citing a host of unique attributes and experiences, McKee and others say that they are ready.

Selecting sailors for the games varies by country. The United States once favored domestic selection trials, pitting sailors against each other to produce the best representative. This approach resulted in one of the most successful Olympic sailing programs of all time, but as domestic Olympic fleets shrank, the value of international competition grew. By the 2000s, to win a medal at the Games, it wasn’t good enough to be the best in the US anymore. The proving grounds were overseas. With only a handful of US medals won over the past few quads, however, a domestic trials format was reinstated for five classes.

The 2023 49er World Championship in the Netherlands saw Barrows and Henken and teammates Andrew Mollerus and Ian MacDiarmid finish in the top 10 (ninth and fifth respectively), which earned the US a 49er berth. All that remained was a one-regatta showdown between these two teams, and other favorites, Nevin Snow and Mac Agnese, to fill that berth.

This battle was a long time coming, particularly for Henken, who had raced in the domestic trials in the 49er class in 2007, and Barrows, who watched his brother Thomas win selection for the Rio Games. “Hans was a kid, got a boat, and sailed in his first trials,” McKee says. “It’s no coincidence that he got Olympic fever.”

Failing to qualify the US for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was a massive blow to the American 49er program—and to the sailors themselves—but after a few crew switches, much of the squad was back to training within a few months.

“I made it clear to Ian a year before the 2021 World Championship [in Oman] that I wanted to be a contender in that fleet,” Henken says. If the pair had a mediocre finish, he would have called it quits. “This was a turning point, and we came away finishing fourth. This was the green light to say, ‘We have what it takes.’”

Barrows, from the US Virgin Islands, is predictably laid-back, a counterpoint to Henken’s fastidiousness. Henken is an engineer who would be designing rocket engines if he hadn’t committed to Olympic campaigning. He lives by the numbers. “We’ve logged every day together in an Excel spreadsheet,” he says. Since June 2020, they’ve sailed 1,300 days together.

“We’re still a young team,” Henken says. “A podium finish in Palma 2022 gave us confidence that we are players.” Finishing top 10 in two of the last three world championships, he adds, boosted their confidence going into the trials. “We knew that we were capable of winning; also, we beat the other two US teams at the last three small events.”

A defining moment of their campaign leading up to the trials was neither the epiphany at the Oman worlds nor their podium finishes. It was the frightening moment when Henken was injured in the cockpit of a foiling SailGP F50 in Taranto, Italy, this past September. What could have easily ended his career and his Olympic destiny turned out to be a test that Henken and Barrows saw as an opportunity to grow as a team.

Henken says that he was unconscious for five minutes and severely concussed, his sternum was broken in half, and four ribs were broken. The prospect of competing in the Pan American Games in October, which is perfect preparation for the Olympics, as well as the January trials were off the table.

“When I woke up in the hospital, I wasn’t sure I could walk,” Henken says. A patient recovery followed. “That’s kind of who I am. Any big goal, I plan to make step-wise goals. As unfortunate as it was. It fell into my wheelhouse. I told myself, It’s going to happen.”

Henken drew on his own determination and the experience of his wife, Helena Scutt, who recovered from a traumatic accident to compete in the 2016 Rio Games in the 49erFX, alongside Henken’s sister, Paris.

“Healing from my accident was a long process mentally in terms of PTSD,” Scutt says. “Just because someone looks fine, they can be a long way from feeling fine. It’s important for teammates, coaches and friends to recognize. I’ll be looking out for Hans.”

For 49er crews, there’s a constant balancing act between training on the water and time in the gym, and when the decision was made to try to sail the Pan Am games, Barrows and Henken knew that their training efforts would be quite compromised.

“Hans likes to have everything perfectly in place. The boat, his body. The good part of this situation was that it took Hans out of his comfort zone,” McKee says. “But if there’s ever a partner to have who wouldn’t be phased, it’s Ian. Hans knew that Ian was fine with everything. It’s a hugely positive character trait. That’s not going to knock him off his game. He can perform well in ­less-than-ideal circumstances.”

“Honestly, Hans is a pretty freak athlete,” Barrows says. He had to steer more gingerly through maneuvers during the Pan Am games to allow Hans to find his footwork. They estimate that Henken was at 60 percent ability at the Pan Am games and 80 percent by the trials. “At the Games, he was a little beat up, but at the trials, I didn’t notice anything.”

“We’re both incredibly hard workers,” Henken adds. “We’re always uncovering that ‘next thing.’ And when things don’t go our way, we say, ‘OK, this is part of the plan,’ and we start working for the next solution.”

“We were next to the boat that we had to beat the entire time,” Barrows says about his trials experience. “The adrenaline was always pumping.” They had the confidence of their Pan Am win and Henken’s remarkable recovery to push them through the marathon regatta. “We had no dip in focus,” Henken says. “The whole event, we stayed positive.”

During training blocks, Asquith would run the 49er squad around a weather mark “tip to tail,” with each team taking their turn at the back of the lineup. They’d race a course, dozens of times, keeping track of scores. The average placing for the winner was always a 2. “Because of this, at the trials, we used this idea that when you’re behind, don’t panic,” Henken says. “Not having that panic, ever, and this idea that this was going to work played a big role in our win.”

McKee says that the reason they never lost faith is because “they knew the trials was going to be that way. They fully expected it, and were mentally prepared for it.”

Going into the last day of the trials, Barrows and Henken had a slight lead, with three races remaining. “They knew the scenario where they could clinch the regatta in the second race of the day, if things went their way,” McKee says. 

The pair knew that the right side of the racecourse was favored; they were in third place as they sailed up the second beat and needed a second to secure the regatta win with one race to spare. With the second place doing a bear-away set, Barrows and Henken  did a perfect jibe set. They nailed the layline for the finish, got the second they needed, and their ticket was in hand.

“They had been sailing contained and controlled,” McKee says. “But because the analytics justified the maneuver, and they matched Ian’s tactical instincts and Hans trusted him, it worked. It never entered their minds that they could flip in a jibe set.”

True to the lessons learned from Asquith’s repetitive drill, the ­winning team had a pile of second-place finishes in their score line: 10 of 21 races, to be precise. “It was such a marathon of a regatta,” Barrows says. “On the way in, Hans started to do his normal boat check. And I said: ‘What are you doing? We’re done!’”

The final score had Barrows and Henken 3 points ahead of Mollerus and MacDiarmid, with Snow and Agnes a mere point behind. The differences were tiny over the course of such a grueling series. “They are very good at boathandling,” McKee says. “Ian has these skills where he knows what the boat can do. There were no boathandling mistakes. It’s amazing, after 21 races, 84 legs.”

Because this will be the first Olympic appearance for Barrows and Henken, the statistics for medal success are not in their favor, but the Games are famous for producing miracles. “When you go to your first Olympics, even if you’re good, you don’t usually do well,” McKee says. “The second time is usually when you win a medal.”

However, he sees something different in Barrows and Henken. “Some people cope [with the Olympic experience] by saying, ‘It’s just another regatta.’ We as coaches don’t think that’s realistic,” he says. “There’s no way to pretend. Ian and Hans are in a position to face that. They’re not going to be mentally taken out by that. That’s just not who they are.”

The pair are fortunate to have two significant experiences simulating the Olympic experience: They sailed in the 2022 Olympic Test Event in Marseille and won the Pan Am games in Chile, which certainly count for something. “I knew that [Pan Am games] experience was going to pay dividends,” Barrows says about the regatta. “We took a lot of notes about what we can control and what we can’t.”

As they now settle into a new rhythm in sync with the Olympic countdown, Barrows says that understanding each other’s needs is most important, as is recognizing when to relax and knowing when they’ve done enough. The trials are over. The berth is theirs. They earned it. And while it was mentally and physically draining, they are now brimming with determination.

The post Skiff Brothers To the Games appeared first on Sailing World.

After a week of blustery cold-front tails whipping through Miami, this final morning is back to normal. The basin is glassy and the sun is balmy again. As my skipper, Stu McNay, and I rig our International 470, a nearby cruise ship’s PA system breaks the boat-park silence. Welcome passengers…enjoy your day at sea. I think to myself how different their day will be than that of Stu and me. The cruisers are salivating for their buffets, but we’re hungry for an Olympic berth.

Once we complete our team warmup onshore, we are the first pair to launch from the beach, primed to execute. Over the previous six days of racing, we’ve enjoyed the sightseeing tour of our 30-minute tow to the racecourse, past multimillion-dollar mansions and through Government Cut. We use this time to acclimate to the day’s conditions. Right away, we see that the wind is increasing and beautiful waves are cresting over the shallows off South Beach. When I see this, I sense that it’s going to be a good day.

Our priority is to stay in the moment and allow our technique to shine. We’ve put in the work, and it’s payday. The anticipated ­scenario is a must-go-right racetrack off the starting line, so today is about being a precision team. We also know that we have to practice our final approach to the starting line because the committee boat is a long motoryacht with the start flag positioned at the bow. The race-committee yacht also swings wildly, which makes boat-end starts even more dangerous. So we agree to a modified approach. We will approach the boat at 20 seconds. Any sooner, and it will be difficult to tack up to the boat and defend the inside position.

We execute the start as planned, but at 30 seconds, there is a pile of boats with the same idea, and there’s nowhere to go. We wait confidently, pull the trigger at 20 seconds, and are the first boat to tack out from the melee.

As we reach the top mark, we have a small lead. In races like this, all of my senses are firing, and I tune in to friends on our support boat cheering for us. It’s the motivation we need to finish off this qualification regatta once and for all. There isn’t a moment of silence in our boat for the next 35 minutes of racing. We treat every wave as important as the next while keeping each other in check. Our tacks are excellent, and before each maneuver I think to myself, Make this one the best one yet. It’s working. We extend downwind, port jibe is fast and fun on the waves. Starboard requires accuracy and discipline to surf. This final race is a thing of beauty. We are worthy of the berth.

Allow me to rewind this story to a moment now long ago. I’ve finished the last race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and immediately after we cross the line, out of medal contention, I know that I need another campaign. I have unfinished business, which is not a good feeling. My skipper, Nikki Barnes, and I have had a beautiful campaign together, but because the Olympic committee changed the International 470 to a mixed discipline, we can no longer sail as a team. I need a new partner.

Back home in Minnesota, I ask ­anyone and everyone in my circles to skipper for me. My body type is one that can work into several Olympic classes, but the most important aspect is my teammate. I commit to a yearlong campaign in the foiling Nacra 17, the Olympic catamaran class, and during this time, Stu, a four-time Olympian, calls me to say, “Hey, Lara, I am 99 percent sure I’m going to retire, but if things don’t work out in the Nacra, keep me in the back of your mind.”

But I feel that I need to grow in other ways and leave the 470 on the back burner. I’m happy being back in the beginner’s ­mindset and loving anything to do with foiling. I also have my eye on the Women’s America’s Cup team that’s forming. A path forward is coming into focus, but after the 2022 Nacra 17 Worlds, my teammate joins the New York YC’s American Magic team full time. Once again, I’m in the same space I was in after Tokyo—searching for a teammate and a campaign to light my fire. My best friend suggests that I give Stu a call and reopen the conversation. It’s a short and exciting phone call, and we both show strong interest. Over the next month, I sit by my phone waiting.

The phone rings. Stu’s in. It’s a go.

I remember two things about our first sail together: He is ­incredibly stubborn about not letting the main ease when I have more leverage to give, and he can tune our boat in five minutes. My mind is blown, and I am so excited to tap his wealth of experience.

We win our first two domestic regattas and earn the right to represent the US at the Olympic Test Event in Marseille in summer 2023. We then finish eighth at the Princess Sofia Regatta, our first international measure. The campaign is off to a great start, but when we arrive at the European Championship and are met with giant ocean swells and a big breeze, we quickly discover our weakness.

Beyond learning a new way of sailing the boat (our bodies and techniques are very different from each of our previous partners), we will need to order and test entirely new equipment from what either of us has used before. Discovering weaknesses is always a fun challenge; it’s part of the life we lead. This part I can handle, but what’s dragging me down is our fundraising—or lack thereof. It’s an area in which I usually excel, but I’m now sinking into the deepest debt I’ve ever had. Donations are hard to come by. Then, right before our first world championship, I receive the most powerful blow to my world: My dad has lymphoma, and together my parents are about to fight this awful disease. I approach this news the way I do any major obstacle in our training. I dive into the research to learn what I can. I keep a positive mindset. My parents are my biggest heroes, and thinking of Dad and what he is about to attack doesn’t allow for me to have a single complaint on or off the water.

I have to avoid the family for the holidays to keep foreign germs to myself and focus on the task at hand. This is gutting because I want nothing but to hug my parents, to sit with Dad, and physically be there to support him. In these moments of hurt, however, we grow and become the greatest versions of ourselves.

It is mid-October 2023 when I start to mentally prepare for the trials, set aside the variables I can’t control, and focus on being my best athlete. If we are going to win, it will take all I have. I accept my debt, so it isn’t a nagging worry. I immerse myself in books and documentaries about athletes conquering their dreams and work closely with my mental coach. I also add boxing to my routine, and I love the quickness it gives me, the explosive power, and memorizing steps.

Stu and I then make the most important decision of our ­campaign: to relocate to the Canary Islands to train with the ­international fleet. To achieve anything great, we will have to ­struggle together, and the regular racing season doesn’t allow for much growth in this way. What really makes this happen is being in an environment where our competitors hold us to our highest standards every day. The days are long, there are no regatta distractions, and we say whatever is on our mind. This is what will give us solid ground to stand on in the heat of battle and a shared ownership of our accomplishments.

During our first training block in Lanzarote, things on the boat are becoming familiar as a team. Stu and I are creating our language on board. We have now experienced a variety of sea states and dialed in a few specific terms that connect us to certain techniques. This is where the fun happens because our days are spent seeking small performance gains. Our Lanzarote training gives us the gift of preparation and chemistry. Stu is humble, he always wants to learn and grow, and he’s a supportive teammate. There is nothing more I can ask for. He has such a natural feel for a perfectly balanced 470, and his range of controls is very narrow, quick and accurate. He is a legend for good reason. 

It’s the eve of our final day of racing at the ­trials in Miami. Our team gathers for dinner, and Coach Robby Bisi ­delivers an inspiring speech. The kind of speech that puts a team on track for winning the next race. And that we do, with confidence. After we cross the finish line, my mind is still racing. It’s impossible to grasp the magnitude of what has happened. The mix of emotion and exhaustion is such a wild experience. There is a sense of accomplishment with the race that we’ve sailed and won, but it brings uncertainty because nothing in our sport is final until the protest time limit is over. I recognize that this is not just our win; it’s a milestone to share with our friends and family who take this emotional ride with us and our competitors and squad mates who put their hearts on the line alongside us.

On our tow back to Miami YC, I ask Stu to share his high and low of the day. “My high was taking the main down,” he says. He’s kidding, of course, but it’s true. This regatta has taken its toll on all of us. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, mentally and physically. It’s been a long road to get here, from watching peers compete at the 2012 and 2016 Games and wanting so badly for the chance to be in their shoes to being told that I will never have the looks or ­talent to make it in the sailing world—but this gal is now 2-for-2 on the trials card.

The post From Trials to Games appeared first on Sailing World.

Training alone in their International 470 off the south shore of Long Island, New York, in the summer of 2021, Louisa Nordstrom and Trevor Bornarth were a world away from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games. There, Olympians Stu McNay and Dave Hughes rolled their sails together for the last time, marking the end of the individual men’s and women’s Olympic 470 disciplines and the beginning of the new Mixed Olympic 470 era. For Nordstrom and Bornarth, and many young sailors looking to reach the pinnacle of dinghy sailing, this new coed medal provides a unique opportunity to compete in the Paris and Los Angeles Games.

“It (the switch to a mixed class) does level the playing field a little bit for a new sailor coming into the fleet because everyone has to reset by sailing with a new person,” Nordstrom says. “There’s a lot of younger talent coming into the 470 because I think it’s easier to get into the class given that everyone is starting fresh.”

Nordstrom, 24, from Sarasota, Florida, grew up racing in the ILCA 6, Club 420 and 29er fleets and excelled at Yale, receiving four College Sailing All-American honors before graduating in 2020. Bornarth, two years younger and from Port Solerno, Florida, stood out in the International 420 class, placing second at the 2017 World Sailing Youth World Championships. While pursuing Olympic 470 sailing full time, Bornarth is also enrolled online at the University of Florida.

The pair first connected in Newport in the fall of 2020 through the US Sailing Team Olympic Development Program, an initiative aimed at preparing elite youth sailors for Olympic-level competition. With both sailors aiming for the 2024 Games, they began their campaign with the Oyster Bay 470 Team and were named to the US Sailing Team in 2022.

A year and a half later, now with the full resources of the US Sailing Team, their most significant challenges still lie before them. Following years of intense training and competition, however, Nordstrom and Bornarth are dialing in their performance, and their results are getting them ever closer to the top.

“Last year was a big year of figuring out how to sail the 470 fast—and that is a huge project,” Bornarth says. “Now we’re focused on racing, in-the-boat communication, and how we’re making decisions in tactical situations where you can either gain three boats or lose three boats. That’s how we can go from struggling in the upper-middle pack to punching through to the medal race consistently.”

Developing Olympic-level performance in the 470 is a lifelong mission, says two-time Olympian Dave Hughes. “You never finish learning how to sail a 470,” he says. “It has many modes available to you, both upwind and downwind, and you pay a large price if you spend time in a mode that is not ideal. You can sail the boat at an A level for an entire race and artificially think that you’re at an A-plus level, but you pay the price with your results.”

With Nordstrom and Bornarth each bringing a unique background and experience to the 470, they rely on each other’s strengths to excel in a variety of conditions. “Louisa is an absolute weapon at calling the shifty stuff—college sailing definitely paid off there. When it’s cranking, and Louisa can’t see anything, I’m calling tactics,” Bornarth says.

The ability for teams to rely on both partners in the tactical conversation is paramount for success in the 470, Hughes says: “Most successful teams are running it so that the crew and the helm can appropriately shift the tactical football. You have to be able to transfer authority on the tactics effectively—there’s just so much to be gained and lost in the margins that that’s where the best teams show their prowess, and that’s how you win regattas.”

Training with international partners in Europe has allowed Nordstrom and Bornarth to work with the world’s leading teams while the American 470 fleet continues to develop. “We’ve worked a lot together with the Italians, the Israelis and the Brits,” Nordstrom says. “Being in Europe and being able to go early to events and train together with the entire fleet has been an absolute game-changer.”

The duo also uses state-of-the-art technology to improve during domestic solo training sessions. “We have trackers, and at the end of the day, we can put it all on a tablet and analyze different aspects of our sailing,” Bornarth says. “That makes it a little more productive than it would be if we just say, ‘Oh, we’re going out to look at this new mainsail,’ and we’re by ourselves—we don’t get any data off it. Now that we’re incorporating these sailing instruments, it’s been a lot more productive.”

Seeing success in their ­racing results after years of hard work is a major driving factor in Nordstrom and Bornarth’s campaign. Finishing 13th at the 2022 International 470 European Championship in Turkey, their best campaign result to date, has motivated them to become even better. “Turkey was really exciting, as we were finally in the front of the fleet,” Nordstrom says. “We’ve known we can do it, and it was great to finally get a taste of accomplishing it. I think a big motivation going forward is to continue experiencing that feeling.”

Nordstrom and Bornarth represent a generation of younger 470 sailors stepping into a notoriously technical and specialized class. Spearheaded by the Olympic Development Program and the private Oyster Bay 470 Team, collegiate sailors and recent graduates flocking to the boat are revitalizing what was recently considered a dying one-design class.

“Right now, the problem is we need boats,” Bornarth says. “People are looking to buy more boats, and a lot of the [420] youth teams are starting to cross over. Domestically, US Sailing has done a great job of starting to promote the 470 again, and if we can get 10 boats on the starting line of the [2023 West Marine] US Open Sailing Series, that will probably be the first time in a decade that we’ve had that.”

The 470 remains one of the world’s most competitive classes despite the influx of new sailors following the change to a mixed format.

“I think, initially, the switch definitely leveled the playing field. But as we’ve seen over the past six months, it has fully ramped up—all the top guys are back with new crews or crews from the women’s or men’s squad,” Bornarth says. “You still have all the same sailors that were initially at the top of the men’s and women’s fleets now at the top of this fleet, so it’s still very challenging. Now that we’ve combined the men’s and women’s fleets, it’s gotten deeper. While the level may not be as high as it was in the top three of the men’s or women’s fleets, now the top 15 are there.”

Strong competition is also returning to the United States, with four-time 470 Olympian Stu McNay partnering with 2021 Women’s 470 Olympian Lara Dallman-Weiss. The full consequences of the shift to the mixed format will not be known for years to come, but current results show promise in assisting the development and longevity of the fleet.

“There’s a lot behind the decision for it going mixed,” says Hughes, who serves on World Sailing’s Athletes’ Commission, a body that represents Olympic athletes in World Sailing’s decision-­making process. “Ultimately, it did yield a case for [the 470] being in for another two Olympics: Paris and LA. Does that help the class? Absolutely, it does. Is the class different in terms of the people and the vibe? Yes, for sure. There are some people who have stuck on after Tokyo, but mostly it has provided a lot of newcomers an opportunity in the class. I think it is healthy, and now it is up to the class over the next two years to show that it can become the type of class that is more modern in terms of its racing, thought process and class development, and really deserves to be in the Olympic schedule.”

While Nordstrom and Bornarth have a long road ahead, they’re enjoying every moment of it.

“It’s all about the process and enjoying it,” Bornarth says. “The big thing in our campaign is making sure that even tasks that aren’t that fun, we try to find the joy in it. We tell ourselves every day that we’re living the dream—this is what we want to be doing.”

While the Olympic regatta was a world away not too long ago, the call of Marseille is fast becoming a real thing for Nordstrom and Bornarth. There will be plenty more sails to roll before then, and if Olympic aspirations come up short in 2024, the next big shot in Long Beach is right around the corner in 2028.

The post The New Mix of Olympic 470 Pairs appeared first on Sailing World.

It’s blowing 25 knots off the land from the northeast. Thick, dark clouds block the sun and bring the cold to the Trofeo Princesa Sofía regatta in Spain, the first European event of our 2022 Olympic calendar. My cheeks and hands are freezing, and my 4/3 wetsuit is soaked. I haven’t been in a wetsuit this thick in years, so moving around the boat is difficult. The wind is crazy puffy and shifty, and it feels like survival conditions at times. I have some nervous and excited butterflies in my stomach knowing that the racing is going to be intense. I have no idea what to expect from ourselves or the fleet. Welcome to Palma, I think to myself. Damn, it’s cold out here.

My teammate, Maggie Shea, and I call these survival days “meerkat racing,” where I need to be “head out of the boat” upwind and downwind to see what crazy puffs and shifts are coming our way. The No. 1 priority is keeping the rig in the air. It’s just us against the boat, but we both love these crazy days.

For the first race, we decide we like the left side of the racecourse and the pin is favored. We set up for a pin start, and although there is chaos around us, we focus on our boat control and distance to the line. We are about to start our first race of the Paris 2024 campaign in our favorite conditions—windy offshore, just like the Midwestern lakes we both grew up on.

We have a great start, and after one minute of being locked into speed, I look over my shoulder and see we’re punched out on the fleet. “Great start, great mode,” I tell Maggie. “If we get headed with pressure, let’s tack. We can tack and clear the fleet no problem.”

I know we’ve both looked over our shoulders and seen that once we complete our tack onto port we will be winning the race. These are the moments that live in my mind forever.

We win the race by a large margin, only to learn we were OCS—by inches. We flush that race and frustration knowing we are fast, have good boathandling and love these conditions. We continue on to race two and round the weather mark in the top three, but while setting the spinnaker, we were forced into a capsize by another team, causing us to finish 12th. That’s a lot of points in the first two qualifying races of a 12-race series, but our goal is not the results, so I reset my mind for race three, which we go out and win.

One of our strengths is our ability to recover from adversity. Before this regatta, our training time had been limited while Maggie recovered from a surgery in December 2021. We’d been progressing as Maggie figured out what her body could handle. It was only the week before the event in late March that we could finally manage five sailing days in a row at three hours each day. So, finishing this first three-race day and surprising ourselves with good speed and tactics was already a huge win. Winning that third race was a big deal.

The last time we sailed this event, in 2019, we struggled to keep our boat upright in the windy and rough conditions. Now, three years later, we had a fire in our bellies to prove that Palma wouldn’t take us down like last time. With our coach, Giulia Conti, and the US Sailing Team performance coach, James Lyne, we set regatta-­specific goals. We had no idea what to expect from our performance because we hadn’t seen the fleet in so long, and we hadn’t raced in a long time. It was a strange feeling, but it forced us to focus on our goals, doing the best we could with the tools we had and only working on things in our control.

To add another layer of complexity, the 49erFX class recently switched to new masts (formerly made by Southern Spars, now CST) and sails (switching from North Mylar to 3Di). We used this new equipment for only one week before the regatta and went into the event knowing that we would have a lot of experimenting to do with our settings.

The forecast called for a windy and cold week, with 12 fleet races and one medal race. Given that, we knew it would be a physical grind, especially for Maggie, but also a mental grind to battle tough conditions. With our tough results on the first day, we had little margin for error to qualify for the Gold Fleet (the top 25 boats overall after two days of racing), but we squeezed into it in 19th ­position overall.

The third day brought beautiful southwesterly conditions that dictated a must-go-right racetrack. The race committee called for four races, and the day was about boatspeed, good lanes to get right, and managing the massive waves downwind. I thought to myself, Let’s see what kind of comeback we can make in the overall results.

Sailing downwind in these conditions is all about finding the limit. The 49erFX bow is low to the water, so we try to stay as far back and hike as low as we can. Maggie pushes her weight into me, and we balance off each other while basically spooning in the back of the boat. I assess each wave and how we are going to get through it. We have simple phrases that translate into what Maggie needs to do with the spinnaker. For some waves, we have to slow and let them pass; for some waves, we can head up at the last ­second to “slice” it. If I misjudge a wave, I tell Maggie “stiff leg,” which means we might nosedive, so we push as hard as we can with our front leg to keep our weight back, hoping we don’t pearl. These types of days are demanding for the crew to work the spinnaker sheet through the range in the waves, and mentally taxing for me to make sure I am making the right call. When you add in other boats, and everyone’s going 18 knots, and not all of them are in control—downwind sailing gets very spicy. Survival is simple tactics and good boathandling.

Before the start of race four, we were excited about how we were sailing. I was exhausted and couldn’t imagine how Maggie was feeling. She is the toughest person I know, and despite the pain and exhaustion, she rallied. We split a Red Bull, charged each other up with some positive vibes and sent it.

That day, we moved up the standings and surprised ourselves with such a positive jump. We managed to have two top sevens, which are keeper races but nothing special. For the final race of the Gold Fleet series, the pin was favored. We agreed to start there, and fought hard with a pack of six other boats. We struggled with lanes throughout the race only to find out we got dinged with another OCS.

Despite this tough ending, I was proud of our team for delivering on our goals and how Maggie handled an insanely tough week. We hit the beach and were surprised when we found out we qualified for the medal race. We now had the opportunity to gain more medal race experience, which is so important for the long game.

It was a tricky one, with a puffy offshore breeze. We were late at the start, which put us back in the fleet. In the end, we finished ninth overall out of 60 teams. Looking back, despite the challenges, we remained rock-steady in our approach and are ever more driven to Paris 2024.

The post Olympic Training And Speedbumps appeared first on Sailing World.

When Team USA left Tokyo empty-handed, we were reminded that Olympic sailing is one corner of our sport that can generate as much ­controversy—OK, almost as much—as America’s Cup. But Team USA is changing.

Oh, you’ve heard that one before?

Let’s give it a think. Paul Cayard is the latest hopeful to step up as executive director of US Olympic Sailing and talk transformation. He’s taking on a firing-line job with guaranteed slings and arrows, and few guaranteed rewards, and it’s a job that won’t pay what he could be pulling in elsewhere. But once upon a time, Cayard was the kid who took a business degree to prepare himself as a professional sailor. And he studied languages because the work is international. And when he became a top dog on America’s Cup teams, he hauled sails with the boys because that says team. Cayard is Mr. Credibility.

His assessment: “When the Olympic game was bring-your-own, the US kicked butt. Then ISAF changed the rules to allow corporate sponsors, and other countries embraced the change. That was 1989, and it was a quantum shift. Before, the only full professionals were the Eastern Bloc sailors who were ‘in the military.’ The US didn’t match that shift. Until recently, we still played bring-your-own. To go to the ’04 Games in Athens, I spent $250,000, and I could afford that because I had a career under my belt. Our young people today don’t have that luxury as they try to compete against someone like Iain Percy who, as a gold medalist, gets paid that much every year to sail for the UK, with funding through their national lottery.”

More money. More coaching. Yadda, yadda and, of course, that’s all on the agenda. But ask Cayard about practical steps and you get answers. They’re about developing robust structures to support young sailors as they grow, promoting opportunities to sail in Olympic classes, partnering with the college sailing system, and building strong Olympic-classes ­competition inside the USA.

Let’s take them one at a time.

The AmericaOne Foundation backed Cayard’s America’s Cup bid in New Zealand in 2000, then pivoted to other goals that are paying off now. Cayard says: “We were blessed to have the vision of Larry Finch, Doug Smith and ‘Buddha’ Bob Billingham to pick one piece of the puzzle and tackle it. You need a pipeline of talent, and there’s no switch you can throw to open that spigot. It takes time. We had seen the way other countries were developing youth sailors. That was not happening here, so AmericaOne partnered with US Sailing in 2014 to create Project Pipeline. Along with the Olympic Development Program, that has proven itself with successes at the youth Worlds level. In 2019, we had five golds in nine classes, and we were the top nation. Now we’re building on that. ODP in 2021 had 150 kids benefitting from Olympic-level coaching. We want to grow that number to 250 over the next seven years.”

The unique North American system of college sailing in (mostly) FJs and C420s gets fingered for sucking up talent while developing excellence—but in a limited range. It’s also noted for providing a compelling social experience but not turning out 20-somethings equipped for the complexities of an Olympic campaign. In Cayard’s view, addressing that by adding an optional high-
performance track shouldn’t be a problem at all. “Sailing is the only college sport that goes on all year,” he says. “Every other sport has a season. To me, nine months of tacking and jibing FJs is a waste of talent for top sailors. There should be options.

“We can leave spring sailing as it is, and when people get to Nationals in May—if they’ve spent time the previous year cross-training in a 49er, FX or Nacra—that experience should be an asset. Then they get back into Olympic-class training in the summer with the option of continuing in the fall semester, and we can have an intercollegiate Olympic-classes regatta in Miami at the winter break. After that, it’s back to the familiar college format in spring to prove they haven’t forgotten how to sail FJs.”

Heh. Haven’t forgotten how to sail FJs…

Pulling this off may prove a mite more complicated than described, but we’ll come back to that. And it is important to be clear that, in Cayard’s vision, college sailing proceeds undisrupted. The people who belong in fall-semester college sailing have at it, while some of their team members go off on the Olympic track until the spring semester.

Eventually, the US ­sailing team might look more like the UK, with its oversupply of up-and-coming youth and its reliance on development squads. Mark Robinson, the UK team’s head of performance, comments: “Most countries would run squads if they could. It’s about having a team that can develop within itself.” Riding the same wavelength, Cayard says: “We’re a country that can build competent squads—our kite sailors are already there—and it is important to build those squads to make us more efficient with time and money. Athletes should train here, not abroad. This is a huge practical step. There are classes where, right now, we don’t have a depth of talent, so it makes no sense for someone looking to get competitive to fly to Kiel Week and finish 47th. That’s time and money wasted. There was a time when you could get great Olympic-class competition here, but not now. We have to rectify that. In Europe, you drive a couple of hours to a weekend regatta, and you’re competing against top sailors from who knows how many countries. We’ve grown from one Olympic-classes regatta in the US to three? Six? That’s a beginning.”

And that beginning provides a point to stop and catch a breath.

Cayard reflects: “It was not a foregone conclusion that I would take this on, but I’m emotionally invested. I am convinced that it is doable. There are these facts to address: An athlete can peak only two or three times per year. There is a science to that, and we need to apply the science. We need a coaching pipeline as well as a sailor pipeline. We need data and data analysis (there was a tech confab at Harken headquarters last fall) because we have to ask, will the best sailors move from the Nacra 15 to the Nacra 17 and blaze their own trail, or will they start from a higher level because we’re doing a better job of telling them what they need to know?

“I foresee a budget 50 percent bigger than in recent years,” Cayard says. “That will begin to provide better support for our frontline sailors. Right now, they spend too much time bartending at fundraisers to pay for coaching. The other component, and this is major, is to pull the trials back to the US. Would Kenny Keefe and I have gone to the 1984 trials if they had been in Holland or Japan? No. Would John Kostecki have gone to his trials if they were in New Zealand? No. And when you go overseas to sail a world championship that is part of your US trials, everything is skewed. You’re not sailing to win; you’re sailing to beat the other Americans. We can do better.”

Thank you, Paul. Now let’s weigh other perspectives regarding one item on your list because there is a long history of people, rightly or wrongly, looking at college sailing as a stumbling block to Olympic development.

Old Dominion University coach Mitch Brindley, who is also president of the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association, sees “no definite plans for restructuring college sailing to accommodate the Olympic path. I’ve had one conversation with Cayard (at the time of this interview), but I look forward to more. We always try to work in concert with US Sailing’s Olympic efforts. As much as we’d love to sail skiffs and high-performance boats, the money for that is hard to come by. One of the beauties of college sailing is the relatively low cost of entry. That allows us to develop athletes who may not have had opportunities before.”

Per Cayard, an Olympic college track would be a bring-your-own-boat deal, at least for starters. And I don’t want to make it sound as if Brindley and Cayard are butting heads. What I think I hear from them is the bare beginning of a conversation in which the threads are not yet meeting in the middle.

Brindley wants you to know: “College sailing is successful, and we’re growing our number of varsity teams and full-time coaches. They raise the game, whether it’s happening at Tulane or Brown, both of which are relatively new as varsity teams. In any campus sport, only a few students matriculate to the Olympic movement, but with shorter races and more mixed racing, we see Olympic sailing in some aspects moving toward the college ­format. We’re glad to see them ­catching up.”

Good stinger, Mitch. And good reader, you will notice he left the door open. Regarding that door, Andrew Mollerus says, “I wish the high-­performance track had been around in my time,” meaning his years at Harvard, where he was a sailing team captain and All-American. Mollerus checked in from Marseilles, where he and Ian MacDiarmid were racing a 49er in the waters of the 2024 Games. His take: “Getting our top juniors into Olympic-class boats early is critical. The US is enjoying success at the youth level—thanks in large part to Leandro Spina and ODP—but there is a high attrition rate during and after college. Among all the possible remedies, the high-performance track that Paul proposes is the best solution.”

By way of counterpoint, in talking with college coaches, I encounter concerns about the logistics, including possible travel commitments for ­sailors who, more often than not, are academic high-achievers. “Just” sailing FJs is already a lot on top of classes and study. But it’s too early for debating because we don’t know what we’re debating beyond objections to the status quo and some big what-ifs. At a granular level, how might it affect teams to have a cadre of their (probably) most capable sailors jumping back into FJs and 420s for spring semester? Mollerus, a Phi Beta Kappa, believes: “The teams would benefit from an influx of lessons learned and technical skills that you don’t necessarily get from college sailing. As for Team USA, it’s impossible to change things overnight, but focusing the program on 2028, as they’re doing, is exactly right. We’re lucky that Cayard is driving this, given his level of respect and clout.”

And that’s where we came in. Among all of Cayard’s proposals for reinventing Team USA, building a high-performance track in college sailing is the most likely to provoke a lively conversation. So, wear your sunscreen. Strap on that PFD when the Y flag is flying. And hey, Paul—no ­pressure.

The post Rebooting the US Olympic Sailing Team appeared first on Sailing World.

Olympic gold medalists Hannah Mills MBE (GBR) and Eilidh McIntyre (GBR) were voted female 2021 Rolex World Sailor of the Year on Thursday 2 December in a virtual ceremony streamed live from the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes, UK.

Australia’s Tom Slingsby has won the male 2021 Rolex World Sailor of the Year in celebration of his achievements in three competitive classes over the past two years.

Mills and McIntyre claimed gold in Tokyo in the 470 class, a victory which made Mills the most successful female Olympic sailor of all time. This was her second Olympic gold, repeating her victory from Rio 2016 with her new partner. McIntyre won her first gold medal in Tokyo and followed in the footsteps of her father, Michael, who won gold at the 1988 Games in Seoul. The pair received 37% of the votes, making them the clear choice for this year’s female Rolex World Sailor of the Year award.

Slingsby secured 29 percent of the votes after defending his Moth World Championship, winning 13 of the 14 races, securing back-to-back 2019 and 2021 title wins. He has also set the standard in the global SailGP circuit, earning the season 1 title as Team CEO and Skipper of TeamAustralia, which is also currently top of the series leaderboard with just two events remaining in season 2. He capped a fantastic year on the water by being part of the crew of Comanche, winners of the 2021 Rolex Middle Sea Race.

A record-breaking 40,000 votes were cast this year to honour the achievements of sailors across all disciplines.

Speaking live at the awards ceremony, Hannah Mills, who is also a sustainability ambassador for the International Olympic Committee said, “I am completely blown away. The lineup this year was absolutely incredible. I am so proud of Eilidh for everything she put into this Olympic campaign, she was the absolute best teammate. I am really honored. I feel privileged to be a female in sailing right now, there are so many opportunities out there. I really hope to be a part of forging the pathway for female sailors of today and for the future. It is inspirational to be part of a federation like World Sailing who take sustainability so seriously and I feel so lucky to be involved in such an amazing sport.”

Eilidh McIntyre added, “I just want to say thank you to Hannah, and everyone for voting for us and for all of your support. We wouldn’t be here without all of the amazing women pushing us.”

Tom Slingsby said, “This is a huge honor for me. Thank you to everyone who voted. I remember when I was 15 years old, I wrote down my career goals and it was to win the Olympic Gold medal, win the America’s Cup and win World Sailor of the Year. I am very fortunate, this is the second time I have won the World Sailor of the Year award. I am so lucky to be in the position I am and to get these amazing opportunities. Congratulations to all the other guys, there were some unbelievable sailors nominated this year.”

World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award

The World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award went to the Sail Africa Youth Development Foundation for increasing the participation of ethnically diverse and female sailors in Durban, South Africa. In the time since launching, the number of girls racing has increased and podium positions have improved year on year. Sailing is now a much more multicultural sport.

The program has doubled as a life skills initiative, ensuring positive sustainable outcomes around alleviating poverty, reducing inequality, developing education and creating environmental awareness. The foundation won the Ethekwini Maritime Cluster Award for Empowering Youth in 2017 and was profiled as part of this year’s World Sailing Steering the Course program.

The 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award celebrates the effective execution or ongoing delivery of high-impact, highly replicable sustainability initiatives that work to protect and restore the health of the ocean, and are aligned with the World Sailing Sustainability Agenda 2030. The award is open to National Federations, sailing clubs, event organizing committees, individual sailors, or any other sailing-related organizations.

The Sail Africa Youth Development Foundation will receive a 10,000 USD prize from 11th Hour Racing to fund their continued sustainability efforts as well as the iconic trophy made from recycled carbon fiber from an America’s Cup boat, infused with bio resin.

Nigel Milln, Chairman of Sail Africa, said, “This award really means a lot to us and Sail Africa. Our focus on racing sustainability and looking after our oceans is a huge benefit to Africa and to smaller development bodies like ourselves. It gives encouragement to the rest of the world that together we can make a difference. We are contributing to the newly-developed South Africa and giving enthusiasm and confidence to the people through sailing. It is an amazing thing that sailing does for everybody and we are very grateful to be a part of it.”

Todd McGuire, managing director, 11th Hour Racing, said, “Congratulations to the four finalists of the World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award. You were chosen from a highly competitive group of non-profit organizations, teams, individuals, events, sailing classes, and manufacturers. You are the innovators within the sailing industry, focused on the sustainability of our sport and restoring the health of our ocean.”

Quanhai Li, World Sailing President, said, “Sailing is blessed with so many talented, determined and accomplished athletes. The accomplishments of this year’s nominees are truly inspirational and every one of the sailors on the shortlist deserves to win Rolex World Sailor of the Year. My congratulations go to Hannah Mills and Eilidh McIntyre, and Tom Slingsby. We look forward to seeing what you do next.

“I would like to also draw special attention to Sail Africa Youth Development Foundation, winner of the 11th Hour Sustainability Award. This has been a life-changing project and ensures that under-represented communities have the opportunity to take part while showing that the sport prioritizes responsible development and inclusion. The potential for this project to be replicated is huge and it will make a lasting difference to the sport and to the world.”

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World Sailing Results and Reports

In the Nacra 17, Riley Gibbs (Long Beach, Calif.) and Anna Weis (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) submitted a strong 3rd place performance in the double-points medal race and ended their event in 9th overall. Team USA’s Stu McNay (Providence, R.I.) and Dave Hughes (Miami, Fla.) will compete in the Men’s 470 medal race tomorrow, while Nikole Barnes (St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.) and Lara Dallman-Weiss (Shoreview, Minn.) narrowly missed qualifying in the Women’s 470 and finished 12th overall.

For Gibbs and Weis, who began their campaign three years ago in the high-performance foiling mixed multihull, an excellent showing in the medal race capped a rapid ascent through the international Nacra 17 ranks. The Pan American Games gold medalists executed one of the strongest starts in the fleet, and used that as a springboard to finish 3rd in the race and 9th overall.

“I thought we did a really good job with our [starting] line homework and our procedures going into it,” said Gibbs, who medaled at the Youth World Sailing Championship in 2014. “We’ve developed a process with starting and Anna was doing a really good job calling our distance from the line and where boats were behind us. It was really nice to have everyone else fighting each other out there, and that gave us a green light to have our own start. And it’s nice that we were able to execute something that we’ve been working on for the last three years or so.”

Gibbs and Weis earned single-digit scores in 8 of the 13 races they sailed this week, a few of which involved comebacks from deep in the highly-accomplished pack. “I think our strength of the week was our ability to rally and reset after having a bad race or errors,” said Weis, who along with Gibbs was coached by Beijing 2008 U.S. Olympian Sally Barkow (Nashotah, Wis.). “Having that in our back pocket, and being able to reset and really move forward and focus on one race at a time really helped us out and allowed us to compete in each moment.”

Gibbs was quick to mention that a key part of their ability to become competitive in the international fleet was a strong group of teams back home in the U.S. “We had amazing training partners like Bora Gulari, Louisa Chafee, Helena Scutt, Sarah Newberry, David Liebenberg, Ravi Parent, and Caroline Atwood. Making the medal race here is an accomplishment, and to be able to say that they’ve really helped us out I think is really special. They should feel connected to this.”

Weis also expressed hope that seeing the visually dynamic foiling multihulls on NBC back home would boost the sport in the U.S. “I hope the coverage on TV inspires more young women to get involved and get into the class because it’s mixed gender,” said Weis, who in addition to her multihull credentials was the 2016 Women’s Singlehanded National Champion in the Laser Radial. “I think sometimes girls shy away from [mixed gender sailing]. But I think the mixed gender aspect creates a really fun and challenging dynamic. So hopefully that inspires more females to get involved.”

In the Men’s 470, Stu McNay (Providence, R.I.) and Dave Hughes (Miami, Fla.) faced a do-or-die battle to get into the medal race heading into the final two qualifying races today. With an 8,11, they moved up to 10th overall secured their spot in tomorrow’s final. However, the 4th place finishers from Rio 2016 were mathematically eliminated from medal contention here in Tokyo.

“At the at the end of the day, we’re happy to have made the medal race,” said Hughes, who is competing at his second consecutive Games as an athlete after also coaching the Team USA 49er at London 2012. “This regatta has been a knife fight and the standard that this 470 fleet has shown is impressive. Our class has really grown during this five-year period since the last Olympics, and it is amazing to see what people have done to build their performance, ourselves included. It is just so inspiring to sail at this level against competitors who we’ve known for years, and who we really respect.”

While a medal may be out of reach, McNay and Hughes have the opportunity to significantly advance up the standings tomorrow. The Americans will enter the race in 10th overall with 78 points, and could advance as high as 6th overall.

“Tomorrow, the plan is absolutely to win the medal race,” said Hughes. “If you’re not willing to totally grab these opportunities, then you really shouldn’t be in the medal race. It will also be bittersweet, because tomorrow represents the last two medal races of this era of Olympic 470 sailing [since the class will become a mixed-gender Olympic event moving forward]. It’s absolutely an honor to be part of that.”

In the Women’s 470, first-time Olympians Nikole Barnes (St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.) and Lara Dallman-Weiss (Shoreview, Minn.) were called over the start line in Race 9, and earned a UFD penalty. In the final qualifying race, they came in contact with the pin end of the line during the start, and finished 19th. Unfortunately, despite battling in the top ten overall for much of the past five days of racing, Barnes and Dallman-Weiss dropped to 12th on Tuesday and narrowly missed medal race qualification.

Despite the pressure of a medal race berth being up for grabs today, the Americans sought to execute strong starts and control their destiny. “We’re not a team that usually gets letter scores; I think that’s usually one of our strengths,” said Dallman-Weiss. “Throughout the regatta we saw that the first beat was just so important, and on this last day we wanted to fight for a great spot [on the starting line] and it just didn’t work out. Olympic sailing is all about fighting until the last race.”

While the team expressed disappointment at missing the medal race, they also said that they were pleased with their progress since teaming up three years ago. “In our [pre-pandemic] World Championship before the most recent Worlds in Vilamoura [Portugal] this year, we finished 30th. Then in 2021 we finished seventh at the Worlds. The numbers [from Tokyo] don’t show the full story of our team, and all the hard work that has gone into it,” said Barnes, who is an active-duty officer in the United States Coast Guard. “Of course, we wanted to make the medal race and to be in medal contention. But I guess this is the universe’s way of saying ‘not this time, nice job, but keep pushing.’ So, it’s heartbreaking, but we also learned a ton and we left it all out on the water.”

The post Final Day of Olympic Sailing To Mark the end of Men’s and Women’s 470 appeared first on Sailing World.

LIVE RESULTS

The highlights of the day for the US Sailing Team came in the Men’s RS:X and Men’s Laser classes, where years of effort and steady improvement paid off for two athletes competing in their second consecutive Olympic regatta. In a day five that was a close copy of day four from a weather perspective, Enoshima delivered wind, waves and close racing among the world’s best dinghy, board and multihull sailors.

RS:X board sailor Pedro Pascual (Miami, Fla.) entered day five of the event with a chance to cement his substantial improvement from Rio 2016 by earning a medal race berth. A 7th place in the final full-fleet race clinched the significant career milestone for the Miami native. “In the final race, I just knew that I had to keep my confidence up, and not worry about the medal race too much,” said Pascual, who finished 28th in his Olympic debut five years ago. “The first two races didn’t go my way, and I figured it couldn’t be three in a row.”

Pascual earned six single-digit scores across 12 races after never fished higher than 20th in Rio. “It’s been a hard five years,” said Pascual. “I made a commitment to improving after Rio, and I’m proud and excited to represent Team USA in the medal race on Saturday.” Saturday’s RS:X medal race will feature 10 competitors, and will count for double points. Pascual enters the medal race in 9th overall, and a chance to move up as high as 8th.

In the Laser, Charlie Buckingham (Newport Beach, Calif.) had one of the best performances by an American sailor in the men’s singlehanded class in recent memory, with his 3, 2 scoreline on the day trailing only that of regatta leader Matt Wearn (AUS), who notched a 1,1. “The two races were pretty similar,” said Buckingham, a two-time College Sailor of the Year. “The key was to get off the line and hike as hard as you can. It was a speed race, and I had pretty good speed today, so that served me well.”

Buckingham now stands in 8th overall, and the top-10 field in the Laser features a notably tight points spread heading into the final day of full-fleet racing on Friday. “The goal for tomorrow is to have another day like today. The beginning of the regatta was a bit up and down. I knew I had to put in a good day today, and that’s the plan tomorrow as well.”

In the Men’s 470, four-time Olympian Stu McNay (Providence, R.I.) and Rio 2016 returner Dave Hughes (Miami, Fla.) finished 9, 10 on the day, and sit in 11th overall. The 4th place finishers from Rio flashed their well-documented speed in both races but encountered frustration along the way. McNay and Hughes rounded the first mark of Race 3 in 3rd, but fell to 9th at the finish in a deep class featuring a 13-point spread between 3rd and 12th places overall. In Race 4, the veteran pair had a tough start, rounded the first mark in 15th, but recovered to 10th.

In the men’s heavyweight Finn class, Luke Muller (Ft. Pierce, Fla.) had a tough Race 5 to open the day, but bounced back in a big way by rounding the first weather mark of Race 6 in the lead. The 2013 U.S. Youth Champion battled with a far-launched group of leaders before ultimately finishing 4th and ending the day in 12th overall.

“The last two days I had a lot of trouble downwind, but I think I was just doing a bit too much and not letting myself feel the waves,” said Muller.  “After the first upwind of that last race today, rounding in front without a lot of pressure on, I just kind of slowed things down and got on some waves. It was really nice to finish on a high going into the [Finn class] rest day. We have a lot of racing ahead and a lot of work to be done.”

In the Nacra 17, Riley Gibbs (Long Beach, Calif.) and Anna Weis (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) had some notable moments, including rounding the first mark of Race 6 in the lead. Ultimately, Gibbs and Weis finished with a 6, 1, (13) on the day, and sit in 10th overall.

“I think we’re fast but pretty inconsistent,” said Gibbs. “We’re working on our technique downwind, and on working together. I think we can race with anyone in this fleet, and we’re just excited for the days ahead.” Weis added that racing a foiling class in big swells requires both mental and physical resilience. “It’s pretty full on. You have to really be ‘on it’ every second. You can’t let up your focus for one instant. As the race goes on, and you get tired, it becomes a bigger mental challenge, but a rewarding one if you can keep the hammer down.”

In the Women’s 470, Nikole Barnes (St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.) and Lara Dallman-Weiss (Shoreview, Minn.) scored a (15), 13 and now sit in 13th overall. The pair have so far exclusively raced on the inshore “Enoshima” course during the first four races of their series, and will get to try their hands at the “Zushi” course further offshore on Friday.

Farrah Hall (Annapolis, Md.) concluded her event with a 16, 16, 16 in the 27-board Women’s RS:X fleet, ending the regatta in 15th overall. As full-fleet racing has ended, and Hall is not in the top-10 overall, she will not progress to the medal race. Tokyo 2020 is the second Olympics for Hall, who finished 20th at London 2012. Hall raced in heavy winds and big waves for much of the week, conditions she noted she has struggled with in the past, but showed significant improvement off Enoshima.

“As far as competition goes, this is one of the best regattas that I’ve ever had,” said Hall. “My speed was awesome. I was smoking around the course and I had some good fights. What I’m really happy with is that I gave 100 percent, did everything that I could, and I sailed well. I didn’t make any major mistakes and I finished with a really good regatta for me. In London, I was a little bit less prepared just because I was more of a rookie and I wasn’t extremely happy with my regatta. But at Tokyo 2020 I can say that I’m very happy with this regatta. I have a huge appreciation for the RS:X class, where you have to be a real athlete to sail it.”

Racing will continue on Friday, July 30, with all classes competing except for the Finn and RS:X fleets, which will have an off day. The 49er and 49erFX will return to action.

Racing will continue on Thursday, July 29, with all classes competing except for the 49er and 49erFX fleets, which will have an off day. The NBC Olympics website is hosting the Tokyo 2020 sailing event for U.S. audiences starting at 11:00 PM EDT (8:00 PM PDT) during the event. There are two televised race areas per day, the “Enoshima” and “Kamakura” courses. As the classes rotate through each course daily, different athletes will be featured on the broadcast.

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Olympics is happening now and soon the medals will be given out, the tales of heroics and tragedy that is the 2021 Olympics will be written for all time. As we watch from afar, I think we should all remember why the Olympics are so important, and how our United States Sailing Team is an overwhelmingly positive force for sailing in this country.

In our sport, there are lots of regattas, but there are a very small number that really represent the pinnacle of our sport, and none more than the Olympic Games. So many of the legends of sailing made their mark in the Olympics; Elvstrom, Melges, Schumann, Conner, Ainslie. Now there is a new crop of top Olympic sailors, and these men and women are very, very good. They are superb athletes. They train relentlessly and scientifically. They have risen through the ranks over many years, and they continue to be driven by the pursuit of sailing their boat a little bit faster.

The U.S. Sailing Team is a diverse and powerful group. In each of the 10 classes, only one team from the U.S. can go and compete, so the competition for those spots is very intense. Every team had a different path to securing their Olympic dream, and each one has many great stories to tell. These athletes have had to deal with failure as well as success. Those that dealt with it well often went on to further success.

Some of our team is relatively young, and this is their first Olympic experience. Our FX (Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea), Nacra 17 (Riley Gibbs and Anna Weiss), Women’s 470 (Nikki Barns and Laura Dallman-Weiss) and Finn (Luke Muller) sailors are representing the United States at the highest level for the first time. They bring a battle hardened yet youthful passion to their efforts, and many will be back again in future Olympics, faster and smarter. Some of our team are true veterans, and have been sailing hard at the highest levels for ten to twenty years. Our Men’s 470 (Stu McNay and David Hughes), Radial (Paige Railey), and RS:X (Farrah Hall and Pedro Pascual) are truly battle hardened, and they are bringing their tremendous experience and perseverance to the Olympic Regatta.

Many of the U.S. athletes have benefited from a well-organized domestic training program, where the top American teams train together and share coaching. This has been providing tremendous benefits, especially in the Covid year. We have also seen our team being pushed hard by youth sailors who are working their way up the Olympic pipeline. Some of these will be representing the U.S. in Marseilles in 2024! The Olympic sailing infrastructure in this country is pretty lean, but also highly effective, with strong leadership form Paul Cayard and Luther Carpenter, and dedicated, professional staff and coaches. The program is on a positive trajectory and there is a lot of optimism about the future.

Think of what an aspiring Olympic sailor went through in the last two years. Until March 2020 your path was clear, the regattas were set, the training partners lined up. Then everything changed in a flash, and the whole sport had to figure it out. Some athletes stopped training but the majority kept at it, despite the uncertain future. Together with their coaches, they had to find a new way to train, new ways to get better without the usual regatta/training camp routine.

The good teams figured it out and used this time to train smarter and get even better. Some teams, including some American teams, used this extra year to go from average to top form. Even when the one-year delay was announced, there was a lot of uncertainty about would the Olympics actually go ahead. The top Olympic athletes find a way to stay strong, including our American team. I am inspired and motivated by the commitment, the expertise, and the teamwork that our USST exemplifies. All sailors should be proud to have these athletes representing the United States. They represent the ideals that we all share: prepare well, play hard but fair, get better each day.

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