U.S. Paralympic Sailing Team Profile - Sonar

by US Sailing on 4 Sep 2008 U.S. Paralympic Sailing Team Profile. Sonar - Rick Doerr, Tim Angle and Bill Donohue.

Reaching the 2008 Paralympic Games in the Sonar class is an achievement Rick Doerr (Clifton, NJ), Tim Angle (Marblehead, MA) and Bill Donohue (Brick, NJ) have obtained through years of hard work and determination. And the name of their boat says it all: Valiant.

Skipper Doerr and his crew now bring their valiant Sonar campaign to the ultimate event: the 2008 Paralympic Regatta, which begins September 8 in Qingdao, China. Over the last two years, the team swept the international competition by bringing home gold medals from major events including the IFDS World Championship, US SAILING's U.S. Disabled Sailing Championship for the Independence Cup, and the C. Thomas Clagett Jr. Memorial Regatta just last month.

Doerr, Angle and Donohue each have a long history with the sport, before and after they became disabled, and each brings their own strengths and experiences to the team. In addition to their impressive on-the-water results, the team was named US SAILING's 2007 Paralympian Team of the Year for outstanding performance and achievement. In 2007, Doerr was named the U.S. Olympic Committee's Paralympic Athlete of the Year for sailing.

Rick Doerr
CLASS: Sonar
POSITION: Skipper
US DISABLED SAILING TEAM ALPHAGRAPHICS: 1998-2007
MEMBER OF: Noroton Yacht Club
HIGH SCHOOL: Montclair Kimberly Academy
COLLEGE: New England College (graduated 1982)
AGE: 47
BIRTHPLACE: Passaic, New Jersey
HOMETOWN: Clifton, New Jersey
OCCUPATION: Physician
SAILING SINCE AGE: 8

When you ask Rick Doerr, Paralympic skipper of the triplehanded Sonar, to name his most significant achievement in sailing, he does not answer his team’s win at last year’s IFDS Disabled Sailing World Championship, or their win at the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials, or the fact that his team has been the #1-ranked team on the US Disabled Sailing Team for three years. His reply is simply, 'sailing again after being disabled.'

Doerr is very much aware that the medals and accolades are the icing on the cake: the deeper reward is being able to play a game that let him reconnect to his past after a spinal cord injury in 1992. 'Sailing got me back to a place where I felt familiar after my injury,' says Doerr. 'When I started sailing again, my health improved.'

Doerr grew up on Barnegat Bay—racing Lightnings, Comets and catamarans—and his family and friends of his youth were avid sailors. 'At a young age, I was forced to crew for my older siblings, who were ruthless. One time, I lacerated my leg in a Lightning regatta and tried to walk away ...' But he was drawn back to the sport.

His first Paralympic class was the singlehanded 2.4mR, and he aced the fleet as a North American champion. But once he sailed the Sonar, which has active able-bodied and disabled competition in the U.S., he fell for a boat that he describes as 'well balanced, sensitive, and high performance' He also enjoys the great rewards of being a part of a team.

His career as a physician in plastic and reconstructive surgery is another passion. 'Some of the challenges of the race course prepare me for [my work],' he told Windcheck magazine. 'And some of the challenges of the O.R. help me put adversity on the racecourse into perspective.'

Doerr and his crew of Tim Angle and Bill Donohue arrived at the U.S. Trials in October ’07 looking golden. They were fresh from their win at the Worlds; they won three of the regatta’s four opening races. But that winning streak did not continue.

Back-of-the-fleet finishes and tough competition from U.S. skippers Paul Callahan and Albert Foster ensued, and the high-states Trials developed into a strategic mindgame for Doerr and his crew, which they won after nine days. Doerr found a silver lining in that struggle: 'The strong competition here in the U.S.,' he says, 'has only pushed us to another level.'

It seems fitting that Doerr would credit his rivals for only making him better, for his actions show that he is not only concerned about winning races but he cares about the community of disabled sailing—about making sure others who also have to put their lives back together after a traumatic accident have the same opportunities.

Doerr now serves as the Sonar Class President, as Disabilities Director of the New England Competitive Sailing Center, and as a board member of Sail Habilitation. 'It is my way of giving back to a sport that has provided me with so much, all my life.'

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Tim Angle
CLASS: Sonar
POSITION: Crew
US DISABLED SAILING TEAM ALPHAGRAPHICS: 2001-2004, 2006-2008
MEMBER OF: Dolphin Yacht Club
HIGH SCHOOL: Marblehead High School
COLLEGE: University of Wisconsin, Madison (graduated 2003)
AGE DURING OLYMPICS: 30
BIRTHPLACE: Marblehead, Massachusetts
HOMETOWN: Marblehead, Massachusetts
OCCUPATION: Web and creative services manager
SAILING SINCE AGE: 8

Like every athlete competing at an elite level, Tim Angle’s life is jam-packed. For seven years he has campaigned a triplehanded Sonar with skipper Rick Doerr, in the hopes of making the U.S. team for the Paralympic Games. In the early days of the campaign, Angle was a college student studying electrical engineering (one term was compressed to six weeks of class to accommodate sailing). Today, as a manager at iRobot—a company that sells robots designed for everything from household to military use—his time at regattas is mixed with heavy doses of daily computer time, to keep things running smoothly at work.

And as if he doesn’t have enough responsibilities to juggle, in May, he's taking maternity leave. But he is not an expectant father. Angle is hoping for another type of milestone: a Paralympic medal.

'We call it ‘Tim’s Maternity Leave’,' jokes Angle, as he talks about this final stretch of training before the Paralympic Games. As of May 1, he will focus full time on sailing.

For the 2004 Games, Angle and Doerr, racing then with crew Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, finished third at the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials. But their track record during the current quadrennium—with crew Bill Donohue rounding out the trio—built a different kind of promise. On the eve of the U.S. Trials, they won the IFDS Sailing World Championship; a month later, they triumphed in a close battle at the U.S. Trials in Rhode Island.

Angle’s heritage is closely knit to the sport, and his family tree includes several generations of sailors. Angle’s father was, 'the reason I became a sailor,' he says. His father took him sailing when he was two weeks old; by age eight, Angle was skippering his own boat. Junior racing lead to sailing at Marblehead High School. But as a college freshman, Angle lost his arm to bacterial meningitis and took time off from school.

When he returned to school, he gravitated to the sailing team. He rigged a dinghy so he could steer the boat with his feet—but Angle admits it wasn’t a fast way to sail. He started coaching the team and deepened his education as a sailor. Racing a Sonar against disabled and able-bodied sailors has been his home in competitive sailing for seven years.

Patience, Angle believes, is a survival tool for someone with a disability: 'You have a problem, and you have to be patient; you have to figure out how to solve it, for the next time.'

Success in sailing, he believes, is also tied to patience. Coaches Peter Wilson and Betsy Alison have ingrained that value into the minds of this team, teaching them to gamble intelligently on the racecourse—to not take long-shot chances but to be patient and take calculated risks that can pay off at the finish line.

But in another sense, Angle feels he and his teammates have waited long enough: 'We’ve been patient for seven years,' he says. 'Now, it’s our turn to represent our country.'

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