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SCUTTLEBUTT 1657 - August 30, 2004Powered by SAIC (www.saic.com), an employee-owned company. Scuttlebutt is adigest of major yacht racing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Corrections, contributions, press releases, constructive criticism and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome, but save your bashing, whining and personal attacks for elsewhere. OLYMPIC FINALS By the time they got back to the dock, the sting of losing the gold medal had worn off and American sailors John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree were smiling again. The Olympic silver medals they'd just won in the Tornado class looked nice after all, especially since it took them 11 years to get to the podium. They had a chance at the gold, but it disappeared in the wake of a stunningly fast Austrian catamaran. Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher so dominated the deciding race Saturday that they'd been splashing around in the Saronic Gulf in celebration for several minutes by the time most of the rest of the fleet finished, including the Americans. "As soon as the race was over, we had our heads down a little bit," said Ogletree, a sailmaker from Houston. "And as we get to shore and start talking to our friends and family, it's all starting to be pretty good." Lovell and Ogletree won just the second sailing medal for the United States at these games. It was their first in three Olympics. "It's just terrific," said Lovell, an accountant from New Orleans who's the skipper. "I've been dreaming about an Olympic medal for a long, long time, and finally got one. It's a huge day for me." America's Cup star Paul Cayard won't be going home with a medal. Cayard, of Kentfield, Calif., and crew Phil Trinter of Lorain, Ohio, had a long-shot chance at a medal in the Star class, but were last in the 16-boat fleet Saturday to finish fifth overall. "That was a frustrating way to end it," said Cayard, in his first Olympics at 45. "If I sailed everything perfect and something didn't work out, it might be easier to accept," Cayard said. "But I really know a lot of places I made terrible mistakes during this regatta. That's frustrating." Brazil's Torben Grael and Marcelo Ferreira clinched the Star gold Thursday, giving Grael an Olympic-record five sailing medals. Canada's Ross MacDonald and Mike Wolfs took the silver, and France's Xavier Rohart and Pascal Rambeau the bronze. Cayard and Trinter finished 17 points out of the bronze. Lovell and Ogletree came in to the Tornado final knowing they'd clinched at least the silver. They trailed the Austrians by three points, meaning they had to sail an excellent race and somehow get far enough ahead of their rivals in the 17-boat fleet to get the gold. When the Americans tried to engage the Austrians in a match race, Hagara was too elusive. "We sort of got control a couple times, but he picked us off on several spectator boats, press boats and then on the committee boat," Lovell said. "So we never really got into a controlling position." "The way they sailed today, no one stood a chance to beat them," Lovell said. "They really sailed terrific. It would have been tough for us to get the gold, but we gave it our best shot." - Bernie Wilson, AP, As posted on the SF Chronicle website, full story: http://tinyurl.com/4yobs Tornado - 17 boats (Final results - 11 races with one discard) 1. AUT, Roman Hagara/Hans Peter Steinacher, 34 2. USA, John Lovell/Charlie Ogletree, 45 3. ARG, Santiago Lange/Carlos Espinola, 54 7. PUR, Enrique Figueroa/Jorge Hernandez, 72 Star - 17 boats (Final results - 11 races with one discard) 1. BRA, Torben Grael/Marcelo Ferreira, 42 2. CAN, Ross MacDonald/Mike Wolfs, 51.2 3. FRA, Xavier Rohart/Pascal Rambeau, 54 5 USA, Paul Cayard/Phil Trinter, 71 8. BER, Peter Bromby/Lee White, 82 Complete scores: http://www.sailing.org/olympics2004 Updated Olympic photo gallery: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/04/olympics QUOTE / UNQUOTE * "I don't think there were any boat-on-boat protests. Everyone sailed cleanly and fair, which has made the competition very fair and a lot of fun." - Charlie Ogletree, USA Tornado Crew, http://tinyurl.com/7245z * "I'm thrilled for them (Lovell and Ogletree). They've always been players, but this Spring they really started putting it together and won the silver medal at the 2004 Tornado World Championships. They had the package that was necessary." - US Sailing Team's Head Coach Gary Bodie. www.ussailing.org * "I don't think anything went wrong. I just think this was a very hard Regatta. A lot of people were having good races and bad races all the time. Many good sailors participated here, but in the end only three crews won the medals. We'll go home and come back in four years' time." - Steve Mitchell, GBR Star crew (sixth place), http://tinyurl.com/4ohk3 * "Maybe someday I'll think, 'That was really awesome to be in the Olympics and represent my country and be in the opening ceremony.' But that's when I'm 70. For now, I still want to be exceptional." - Paul Cayard, NY Times, http://tinyurl.com/59hst * "The U.S. will probably win the award for most near misses, with the Women's 470, 49er, and Star teams all finishing fifth, one or two bad races from winning a medal." Stuart Streuli, Sailing World Senior editor, http://tinyurl.com/5tmue CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS (Sponsored by West Marine) Events listed at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar OLYMPIC GEAR, MEDAL PROVEN Sailing Angles' Sailing Sun Shirts (UV Blockers), Spandex Farmer Johns, and Droop Hiking Suits were the gear of choice for 470 Gold medalist Kevin Burnham, Silver and Bronze medalist sailors in Stars, and Silver medalist in the Tornado as well as many others (Spain, Bermuda, Denmark). Our Battened Hiking Shorts were worn by Star class Silver medalist as well as on Australia and Denmark to name a few. Gear designed for the most discerning customer - the Olympic sailor and you. Start wining today! Discover and buy Sailing Angles' unique designs at APS, Layline, TeamOne and http://www.sailingangles.com KING OF THE HILL Britannia rules the waves again - at least in Olympic sailing - with the Americans trailing in their wake. Britain led the medals count at the Athens regatta with five, including two golds. The Americans won just two, a gold and a silver. The reasons are pretty simple - money and experience. The British team receives funding from the national lottery. American sailors are generally on their own. "We have a lot of sailors who work very hard, but obviously we don't have the same amount of financial resources available to our sailors, or to us to help our sailors, as other nations are able to have," said Fred Hagedorn, a U.S. Sailing Association official. "That of course impacts the amount of time the sailors are able to spend sailing as opposed to having to do fund-raising or have a regular job." Every member of the British team was either a past medalist, a current or previous world champion or at least a top-10 finisher at the worlds. Not surprisingly, the American crews who won medals in Greece had a good deal of Olympic experience. Paul Foerster of Rockwall, Texas, and Kevin Burnham of Miami Beach won the 470 gold medal with a class match-race victory over a British crew. It was Foerster's fourth Olympics and Burnham's third. Both had previously won silver medals. John Lovell of New Orleans and Charlie Ogletree of Houston won the silver in the Tornado class. It was their third Olympics together, and first medal. Having Olympic experience is "incredibly important," Lovell said. "Just going through security and all those different things, if you don't have experience at that, it can really throw you off your game. It doesn't take much to throw someone off their game at this level." Strangely, two of the best-funded U.S. crews didn't do well. America's Cup star Paul Cayard of Kentfield, Calif., who spent more than $100,000 of his own money on his campaign in the Star class, and crew Phil Trinter of Lorain, Ohio, finished fifth. The Yngling crew led by skipper Carol Cronin of Jamestown, R.I., secured a $244,000, two-year sponsorship from Atkins, one of the companies behind the low-carb diet craze. But after beating several higher-ranked crews in the U.S. trials, they finished 10th at the Olympics. But, Cayard, Trinter and Cronin and her crew, Liz Filter of Stevenville, Md., and Nancy Haberland of Annapolis, Md., were all in their first Olympics. "I think that what we're seeing change is that the amount of time it takes to have a successful Olympic campaign has gone from being a typical four-year process to being something that's closer to eight to 10 years," Hagedorn said. "Unless it's a new event, odds are it's not going to have people who haven't been campaigning for a while." - Bernie Wilson, AP as posted on the Macon Telegraph website, full story: www.macon.com/mld/macon/sports/9530293.htm Curmudgeon's Comment: Great Britain collected medals in five of the 11 classes, and there were six nations with two sailing medals. Brazil tops that list with two Gold sailing medals, while athletes from both the USA and Greece both took home a Gold and a Silver. We've summarized the Olympic results in an easy to read table format. Take a look: www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/04/medals/ RE-LAUNCHED The official website of the America's Cup (www.americascup.com) has been re-launched ahead of the opening races of Act 1 of the 32nd America's Cup. The enhanced website boasts many new features, and is designed to help tell all of the stories of the 32nd America's Cup. It currently supports four languages, with full coverage of the event in Spanish, English, French and Italian. The website will feature 'competition' and 'between competition' modes with special features during racing. During the Acts, there will be a graphic race tracker feature to allow users to follow each race live. There will also be live audio coverage of the races, to accompany the race tracker. Between the Acts there will be various features sections that will allow the user to access the history of the America's Cup through a unique timeline. New features and sections will be added to the web site over time, so that regular users consistently find something new and fresh. For openers you should check out the sexy webpage that graphically shows the transformation planned for Valencia Harbor. - www.americascup.com/en/americascup/places/valence/journey2007.php SPECTATOR SPORT The promise of windy conditions has drawn eight Aussie 18s to St. Francis YC for five days of racing this week. The fleet includes three former Giltinan winners including Howard Hamlin, of Long Beach, Calif. The 18s will race Monday through Friday on a windward-leeward course along the City Front between the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman's Wharf, with t he start-finish line and mid-course gate will be set opposite StFYC for spectator viewing. On Thursday, following a single buoy race, the Ronstan Bridge to Bridge Race downwind to the Oakland Bay Bridge is scheduled for late afternoon where the 18s will be joined by kite boards and windsurfers. - Rich Roberts, www.stfyc.com and www.18footers.com WIN A GOLD MEDAL AT THE 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES! The Pegasus non-profit foundation is putting together a complete program for a few select, talented, hardworking team players. As part of our Pegasus Racing Olympic Gold program, you will be sailing at least 250 days a year, coached by the best and work with fitness trainers and nutritionists. Your focus will be to win medals in 2008 by becoming a better sailor, stronger, faster and more flexible. If you (and your crew) believe that you have what it takes, we want to hear from you now, drop us a line at Olympic.gold@pegasus-digital.com ACT 1 On Saturday afternoon, the Emirates Team New Zealand and K-Challenge boats arrived in Marseille, after a short, 18-mile, passage from La Ciotat. That means five of the six boats competing in the Marseille Louis Vuitton Act are now on-site on the J-4 pier on Marseille. The BMW Oracle Racing team is under tow from Valencia, and is scheduled to join the others on Sunday. K-Challenge sailed the last five miles through the Rade Sud, which is the race course area for Act 1. The team used the delivery as an opportunity for sea trials and sail evaluation as K-Challenge only took full possession of the boat, FRA-57, in La Ciotat last week. A small flotilla of spectators soon gathered around, as Thierry Peponnet and Dawn Riley put the boat through its paces. The teams are expected to take to the sea next week, training, testing, and practicing ahead of the first race in Act 1, on the 5th September. - America's cup website, full story: http://tinyurl.com/3l444 NEWS BRIEFS * Australia ended the 2004 Olympics without any medals in sailing, for the first time since Pusan, Korea, in 1988. - Sail World website, full story: http://www.sail-world.com/ * New Zealand Sailing: A major failure, missing the medal rostrum for the first time since 1976. Five of the eight classes placed in the top 10 but results did not match the resources poured into their campaign. The best finisher was Mistral veteran Barbara Kendall in fifth but she was never in the hunt after two early disqualifications. The rest were also capable of better. - NZ Herald, full story: http://tinyurl.com/6qwfl * A protest on the final day of the 1D35 Nationals dropped the apparent winner, John Musa's Jacaibon, from the top spot on the podium into second place, with the championship going to John Wylie's Tabasco. Third place went to Chris and Kara Busch's Wild Thing. The 10-boat event was sailed at the Chicago YC in mostly light to moderate conditions. All of the top three boats were from the San Diego YC. Complete results: http://tinyurl.com/6ehal * William Lynn, of Marblehead, MA, won the 40-boat Sonar North Americans presented by Rolex. He was followed in the event hosted at the New York Yacht Club's Harbour Court by Peter Gallaway, the leader at the end of the first day, Craig Sinclair, David Franzel, Steven Shepstone, the current world champion in the class, and Dave Curtis, a two-time Rolex Yachtsman of the year. The winds for the three-day regatta sailed outside on Rhode Island Sound were from the south and southwest, averaging 10 to 15 knots, and the seas lumpy. - www.nyyc.org * Dave Voss appeared to have an easy time defending his Schock 35 National Championship in his Piranha. Piranha won five of the eight races and finished no worse than third in the 16-boat fleet racing at the California YC. Jeff Janov's Ripple won a tie-breaker to take second place over Whiplash sailed by Ray Godwin in the championship series sailed in 5-12 knots of breeze on the Santa Monica Bay. - http://calyachtclub.com/cms/RaceResults/Series135.htm PARITY This year, 61 nations sent a total of 400 sailors to the Olympics. Seven countries, including the United States, had entries in all 11 matches. Twenty countries received medals. "I think it's great that it isn't controlled by one country," said Paul Henderson, president of the international sailing federation, known as the ISAF. "We have different classes, so that the wealthy countries dominate some classes and the emerging countries dominate others." But sailing author and television analyst Gary Jobson warns that though parity is good for the sport, it does not bode well for future American medal efforts. Americans won nine medals in 1992, seven medals in 1984, five medals in 1988 and four in 2000. "The U.S. needs a better system of identifying young sailors early and saying to them, 'Hey, why don't you sail Star class or Europes?'" Jobson said. "We do a fairly good job with the really young ones and the high school-age ones, but then we lose them." By the time the Beijing Olympics arrive, 470-class sailor Isabelle Kinsolving, now 25, would be the youngest of the current batch of 18 team members. Twelve of the current members will be over 35, and many have careers and families to attend to. Henderson agrees. "When I grew up …we had a massive regatta circuit on the Great Lakes. You didn't have to go far to race every other weekend," he said. "That's totally disintegrated. I believe the yacht clubs in North America are not doing their job. "The yacht clubs have to go back to what they were started for. Our yacht clubs are on some of the most beautiful pieces of land. But they are focused on their restaurant facilities and their swimming pools and the reason they're there has been moved to the background," Henderson said. Gary Bodie, the U.S. head coach, named two other stumbling blocks: Olympic seasoning and sponsorship. "Experience is a big, big factor, and it is one of the problems with our program. It does take 10 years. Across the whole field, very, very few sailors win Olympic medals their first time. "We need more resources. Our model of relying on the sailors to get private funding isn't working. It works OK for four or five years, but then it starts breaking down for career athletes," said Bodie, who was the Naval Academy's head sailing coach for 10 years. "To win as this game, you really need to be a career athlete." - Candus Thompson, Baltimore Sun, as posted on the website of the Stamford Advocate, full story: http://tinyurl.com/52wsy PLANNING A REFIT OF YOUR MAST? Advance planning on replacement parts can save you lay days, headaches and money. Our expertise can aid you in determining which parts are likely to need replacement before you have a breakdown. Bartspars has a full capacity machine shop. Our machinists have twelve years experience in marine hardware manufacturing. http://www.bartspars.com OLYMPIC SIDEBAR Among those left in (Finn class Olympic Gold Medalist Ben) Ainslie's ferocious wake in Athens was Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker. He finished 13th overall and, with the bulk of the New Zealand Olympic sailing squad, was well off the pace. So consider this: what happens if in the course of the next two years Ainslie carries the edge he had over Barker in Athens into Team New Zealand's environment? Barker is skipper, Ainslie the hotshot. Over to you Mr Dalton. - David Leggat, NZ Herald, full story: http://tinyurl.com/3kods Curmudgeon's Comment: Although American Kevin Hall did not medal in the Finn class at the Olympics, he also beat Dean Barker … and he too will be in Team New Zealand's afterguard. THE CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION Much of life seems to be about ass - you're either covering it, laughing it off, kicking it, kissing it, busting it or behaving like one. |
