Hold Fast: An Olympic Sailing Podcast

For a couple weeks every four years, sailors in the Olympic Games light up our hearts with stories of triumph and determination. Yet, the larger part of their stories happen in the years of training and preparation in between each Olympics.

The Hold Fast Podcast hosted by Nathan Housberg showcases United States sailors with Olympic experience or aspirations as they share the parts of their journey that don’t typically make it to press.

Here’s a two part session with Paris Henken:

Part 1
Paris Henken is from Coronado, CA where she first learned how to sail 29ers. She was still in high-school when she got to try the 49erFX, the then new women’s Olympic class sailboat. Her good family friend happened to be the high-performance director of US Olympic sailing and pushed her to give it a go with teammate Helena Scutt.

The journey wasn’t easy and had one especially uncomfortable speed bump in a foreign hospital, but eventually the pair made it to the 2016 Olympics with a little help from their coach Willie McBride.

On this episode, Paris and her coach Willie detail the journey and how they tackled some of the challenges along the way.

Part 2
Paris Henken is just barely getting back into the swing of college when she gets asked yet again to do a new campaign for the Olympics, this time with the most recent US Sailing gold medalist Anna Tunnicliffe Tobias.

Paris shares what went into her decision to return to the campaign trail even before she’d finished school again and how her campaign faced some tough questions along the way. Her coach Willie McBride shares why he always had confidence in them and Paris shares the toughest part of not qualifying for Tokyo 2020. Hint: It’s not what you might think.

Join Nathan Housberg and his co-host, certified mental performance consultant and licensed psychologist, Dr. Tim Herzog for part two of their interview with Paris Henken and her coach Willie McBride.