Debriefing the 2016 Rio Olympics—Sailing news North America and beyond
by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 23 Aug 2016
Luke Ramsay and Nikola Girke (CAN) in Nacra 17 on Day 7 at the Rio 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition Sailing Energy / World Sailing
Despite dire warnings about water quality, Zika, terrorism, and common-variety street criminals, the Rio 2016 Olympics came off (more or less) without a hitch, delivering a Games that will be remembered for decades. Sure there were the heroic stories of Super Alpha athletes such as Michael Phelps or Simone Biles, who collectively harvested a small mine’s worth of gold medals; the head-scratching strange story of Ryan Lochte’s terribly misguided series of decisions out of the pool, not to mention myriad other human-interest stories, but there’s one story that has gathered virtually no traction in mainstream press, namely the start of the USA’s return to Olympic-sailing greatness.
While our sailing team only brought home a single bronze medal-won by Caleb Paine in the Finn class-it was the first time that the Stars and Stripes had been played at an Olympic sailing awards ceremony since the Beijing 2008 Olympics, where Anna Tunnicliffe took gold in the Laser Radial and Zach Railey (whom Paine bested for his Olympic berth) took silver in the Finn class.
It’s critical to remember, however, that Jennifer French and JP Creignou won a proud silver medal at the London 2012 Paralympics in the SKUD-18 class, but Paine’s was our first Olympic sailing medal since 2008.
So where does this put American Olympic sailing, four-plus years after our medal-ceremony shut out at the London 2012 Olympics? While one bronze could appear to be a fluke if only taken at its surface value, it’s important to peel the onion a bit and look at the medal-race results.
American sailors qualified for medal races in six out of 10 different classes and enjoyed some strong, near-medal results, most notably by Stu McNay and Dave Hughes, who earned a fourth-place finish in the Men’s 470, and Annie Haeger and Briana Provancha, who were medal contenders in the Women’s 470 until the last race of their Olympic regatta.
Moreover, Bora Gulari and Louisa Chafee earned an eighth-place finish in the Nacra 17 class (impressive, given that they only sailed together for roughly six months), Paige Railey earned a tenth-place finish in the Laser Radial, and Paris Henken and Helena Scut earned a tenth-place finish in the 49erFX class.
While these finishes were not medal-quality results, they do clearly indicate that Team USA was competitive in some of the hardest Olympic classes. It’s also important to remember that several of these sailors, including Henken and Scut and Haeger and Provancha, are young enough to still have several more Olympic quadrennials left, should they choose to continue to pursue their gold-medal dreams.
This certainly bodes well for our team, but the far bigger result that became evident at this summer Rio Games was the simple fact that when a team plummets as badly as Team USA did at the London 2012 Olympics, it will take several Olympic cycles to build back a world-class program, provided, of course, that the team quickly takes the right corrective measures.
Four years on, there’s no question that the corrective measures that US Sailing Team Sperry took following the London XXX Olympics have begun to bear fruit, but just like a massive ship changing course on the open ocean, it can take some time (read: quadrennials) for the captain’s rudder command to be registered by the vessel’s fluxgate (or digital/satellite) compass.
In the case of US Sailing Team Sperry, these changes included a significant re-tooling of the coaching staff, a fully re-configured youth-talent pipeline, a better fundraising program, an extensive study of Rio’s Guanabara Bay complex tide and currents, as well as a commitment to sending our sailors overseas.
So while there is still plenty of work remaining for Josh Adams, the managing director of U.S. Olympic Sailing at US Sailing, as well as the rest of his talented team of coaches and administrators, it appears as if the next several quadrennials should present plenty more opportunity to hear the Star Spangled Banner played at Olympic sailing medal ceremonies.
As for Team Canada’s showing at the Rio 2016 Olympics, unfortunately, the team’s medal-ceremony shut out continues. In fact, the team, which has won a total of nine Olympic medals (three Silver and six Bronze), has not won an Olympic medal in sailing since 2004, when Mike Wolfs and Ross MacDonald took a Silver medal in the Star class at the Athens 2004 Olympics.
Team Canada’s best finish at the Rio 2016 Olympics was in the Nacra 17 class, where Luke Ramsay and Nikola Girke took fifteenth place. Erin Rafuse and Dannie Boyd took sixteenth place in the 49erFX class, Brenda Bowskill took sixteenth place in the Laser Radials, Tom Ramshaw finished in twenty-first place in the Finn, brothers Jacob and Graeme Saunders took twenty-second in the Men’s 470 class, and Lee Parkhill finished in twenty-third place in the full-rig Laser.
As the sports world turns the page on another summer Olympics and transitions to the start of another American football season here in the States, it’s important to recognize the great achievement and effort that was put forth by our Olympic sailors, and to continue to nurture our Olympic sailing teams. Sure, the ship might be responding slower than anyone would like to the captain’s helm command, but the point is that-in the USA at least-the right kind of changes have been made, and now it’s a matter of letting the bow lock onto its new course over ground.
May the four winds blow you safely home,
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