Exit interview with Josh Adams, US Sailing's Olympic boss, part one

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 26 Oct 2016 Historically, the USA has been one of the most decorated nations in Olympic sailing, with a total of 60 medals (19 gold medals, 23 silver medals and 18 bronze medals) earned since 1896. In fact, only the UK outranks the United States when it comes to Olympic sailing medals, and they hold a total of 58, with 28 being the most precious of Olympic metals. While this sounds fantastic, any student of Olympic sailing history can tell you that the USA's halcyon days of Olympic glory ended after the 2000 Games, when the American-flagged team brought home four medals, one gold, two silver and one bronze.

The team brought home just a single gold and a single silver from both the 2004 and 2008 Games, but the wheels really abandoned the bus at the 2012 London Olympics, when the USA suffered their first medal-ceremony shutout since the 1936 Berlin Olympics, despite strong showings at the 2011 ISAF (now World Sailing) World Championships just eight months before the Games. Clearly, something had to be done, and quickly.

Following the London Games, a long-planned leadership change at US Sailing brought former SAIL magazine publisher Josh Adams to the Olympic helm, after eight years in the capable hands of Dean Brenner, as Managing Director of U.S. Olympic Sailing. (Full disclosure: I worked for Adams as SAIL’s senior editor for much of his tenure as the magazine’s publisher, and I am proud to call him a mentor and a friend.)

Adams immediately set to work trying to solve a number of issues, including fundraising, elite-level coaching and building a clear understanding of the racecourse challenges (wind, waves, currents, water pollution), that would be facing U.S. sailors on Guanabara Bay at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

These changes were big and ambitious, and the adage certainly applies that large ships don’t exactly turn on dimes. While Team USA realized some success in the Men’s Finn class in the form of a proud bronze medal that was earned by Caleb Paine, as well as some strong medal-race performances and other personal Olympic bests, it was obvious that, while the young team is talented, it needs more Olympic experience and maturity to reach the podium’s top steps.

The good news is that the basic ingredients are now assembled for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2024 Games (where Team USA will likely truly shine again). The bad news for Adams, however, is that the job of Managing Director of U.S. Olympic Sailing requires constant travel and time away from home, which doesn’t mix well with the job responsibilities of being a dad to two strapping young lads (America’s Cup teams, pay attention), ages seven and nine. As a result, Adams made the decision to step down from US Sailing and take the helm of their family business, starting in December.

Now, US Sailing finds itself in the midst of a leadership search, with World Sailing’s Sailing World Cup Miami (January 22-28, 2017) less than three months away and planning for the next Olympic quadrennial at a critical stage. While Adams has promised a smooth transfer of leadership, important grains of sand are now falling through the metaphorical hourglass.

I caught up with Adams for an extended phone interview, which we will be presenting in two parts (this week and next), about the team, its headwinds and tailwinds, and the longer-term corrections that are needed to return Team USA to its former sailing-powerhouse status.

What are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned about what the US sailing team needs to do to once again be competitive on the Olympic level during your tenure ship as Managing Director of U.S. Olympic Sailing?
I think the most important thing any national team can do is help prepare athletes to be complete sailors when they arrive at major international competition. The Olympic Games is the ultimate test, and there are many important tests along the way, like world championships. As we saw in Rio the best sailors are complete sailors-they’re prepared for a variety of conditions. That’s pretty crucial and the US Sailing Team’s job is to prepare sailors to be as complete as can be.

We need to provide resources that enable sailors to maximize their time, training, with high-level coaching [that’s] focused on competing in the right events and training in the right venues. We feel we made a lot of progress in this direction and look forward to seeing that expand in the future.

What do you see as the three biggest strengths that the USA has when it comes to Olympic sailing, as well as our three biggest weaknesses?
Well, among the strengths here in the USA is [the fact that] there’s no shortage of young sailors who have [a] major interest and appetite for high-performance sailing. [We’re a] big country with a great tradition in sailboat racing and as we’re finding through the Olympic Development Program, there’s no shortage of talent out there. That’s a real strength.

Another strength would be the U.S. athletes’ ability to focus on performance and I think you saw that in the 15 athletes who represented the USA in Rio. They were really good at eliminating distraction and focusing on performance. They’re high-performers, all of them. And you know I also think the group of athletes representing the U.S. in Rio showed their ability to be versatile [sailors]. It was a mostly young team and despite that [they] showed some versatility.

[As for weaknesses,] our team’s 16 million dollar budget this quad is a high water mark for US Sailing and still not enough to achieve at the level that we all want to achieve. So point number one is the need for more resources.

Number two is [that] we need more Americans focusing on high-performance equipment earlier in their sailing careers. A lot of progress is being made with the Olympic Development Program to help sailors along the Olympic pathway and help them focus on high-performance equipment, but that remains a challenge.

One of the classic challenges for the USA is the size of our country and the distance we are from a lot of top-level international competitions. That just really emphasizes the need to increase the quality of domestic training here in the US.

When I look at Olympic sailing and the struggles that the U.S. team has gone through for the past two quads, the two biggest smoking guns—to my mind at least—are the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and the U.S. tradition of college sailing, which is a unique and loved institution, but one that I don’t see doing us any long-term Olympic favors. Your thoughts?
The Ted Stevens Act is important for sport in this country and it’s a unique element that we deal with as Americans. But it doesn’t really get in the way of trying to achieve high-performance in Olympic classes [because] there are other ways to work around it or work with it. We have a really strong partnership with the US Olympic Committee…we’ve found [that]… there’s plenty of latitude within the Ted Stevens Act to achieve our goals.

From the beginning of the Rio quad in 2012 we have viewed college sailing as part of the solution. We want our success in Olympic Sailing to be sustainable and college sailing is absolutely part of the solution. I can cite several examples of leadership in college sailing working with the Olympic Development Program to get young sailors who are interested in high-performance equipment out in the water and get them exposed to Olympic-caliber coaching.

We don’t really view [college sailing] as an obstacle, we view [it] as a key partner in our Olympic program because it’s important for Americans to go [and] get a college education. And we are pretty confident sailors with the focus and commitment to high-performance sailing can get their training and Olympic experience while getting a strong education, and while helping their sailing teams perform in the college sailing arena.

What do you see as the most important corrective measures that you have implemented to the U.S. Olympic sailing program during your tenure at the helm?
I’ll focus on two areas, and one is our team’s unified mission around a pure performance focus. To move that forward we really focused on the importance of surrounding athletes with world-class coaching. That initiative was led by High Performance Director Charlie McKee, and the best example of it is the U.S. Olympic coaching staff at the Olympic Games. It was the best example of how we steered resources to help our top athletes get the highest-level coaching and expertise in Olympic Sailing in their specific classes. [Sailing is] really a coaching-intensive sport and we feel we got that right.

The other aspect was [that] we feel that we had a clear understanding of what it would take to perform in Rio. Every Olympic venue is different and will require different levels of preparation. But Rio was a unique venue in that there was limited knowledge about sailing there because it’s not a regular stop on the Olympic circuit. But we certainly had preliminary information from Americans who had competed there…but not nearly the depth of knowledge you would have on a typical Olympic venue.

Knowing that, we went hard to work to understand [Rio’s Guanabara Bay] and quickly identified the importance of maximizing our training time there, researching the conditions, and then making sure that we just had the best possible operations plan to make it easy for the athletes to maximize their time training in Rio.

Do you see these measures continuing on after you have left the job, or do you think that the new person will want carte blanche to reshuffle the deck, as they see fit?
Well it’s going to be important for the leadership that follows me to run their own program, lead the way the way they need to lead [and] put their own mark on it.

Having said that, there’s a foundation in place that has some core fundamentals required for success in Olympic Sailing. I view those as continuing and expanding. And I think people are going to be happy to see that there will continue to be a focus-and even expanded focus-on obtaining resources for athletes so the athletes in turn can spend more days training on the water, especially in the U.S., to make their training efficient. And I think everyone is going to see a continued focus on the keys of building speed, building depth in our classes, and leading to more podium performances.

I’m really optimistic about USA’s prospects in sailing going forward. I’m not alone in the strong belief that I have in this current generation of athletes, as well as some of the youngsters coming up behind them. There is really a strong foundation in place. I think you saw it in Rio, where you got an indication of this groups’ improving fortunes, and I think we’re going to see them go on to do great things in Tokyo and beyond.

Can you give me an update on Project Pipeline? Specifically, I’m wondering where we stand as far as raising the matching monies needed to get this program fully funded?
We’re right near the finish line on our fundraising goal that triggers the remaining part of the AmericaOne Foundation’s commitment to US Sailing. There is a $3.3 million dollar matching grant from the AmericaOne Foundation that will be trigged when we raise the remaining $175,000.

Wow that’s great! You’re right there.
Yeah, we’re right there. Rarely do you have a matching grant with such a multiplying factor in a campaign. We’re going to finish it up this year and we’re right there at the finish line. It’s exciting because the remaining funding fulfills the base budget of $7.2 million dollars over ten years just for the youth development segment of the Olympic program.

The way it works, the total budget is $7.2 million dollars the AmericaOne Foundation is funding five million of that. Several generous private donors called Pipeline Founders have come aboard to provide the other $2.2 million.

I know that the resources will then grow on top of that. That’s going to be a funding base in place for years to come.

In addition to completing [our] fundraising goal, the Olympic Development Program is cranking along now, coming towards the end of our second year. And just [recently] the 2016 Youth World Team was announced, so they’re getting ready, they’re doing some training, getting ready to head down to Auckland and represent the USA. That’s a really strong group of young sailors who have worked hard all year on their sailing.

Several of those young sailors and many other sailors who are involved in the Olympic Development Program just participated in a training camp at the USOC’s Chula Vista Training Center outside of San Diego. For those young sailors it was an incredible opportunity to hear from the likes of Anna Tunnicliffe, and Luther Carpenter, and Charlie McKee, and Leandro Spina and talk about how to map out their Olympic pathway and specifically how to campaign, and how to train. These young American sailors are getting guidance and at a critical time in their development as sailors. That’s what the Olympic Development Program is all about.

In your mind, is a guy like Caleb Paine the new prototype for a medal-winning U.S. sailor, or can our athletes still pursue traditional college degrees and be internationally competitive.
There are different ways to do it, different paths to take. Caleb postponed his college education in order to pursue Finn sailing, that was the right decision for him. I can give you several other examples of teammates who went to college and are performing at a high level of Olympic Sailing. It’s a personal decision on the part of the athletes about whether they are going about Olympic Sailing and how they’re going to go for it. So for Caleb, man it worked, it was a great decision, brilliant. He postponed college and he’s a bronze medalist. We’re all really proud of him. He did an awesome job.

But there are several other members of the team who had strong performances in Rio, [and who have] got their eye on the prize for Tokyo and they decided to pursue a college education first. One example of that would be Charlie Buckingham [who] went to Georgetown [and was a] two-time college sailor of the year. He’s a world-class Laser sailor, [and] he finished eleventh in Rio. Just two weeks ago was over racing in [Japan] with some of his US Sailing team members, Chris Barnard and Erik Bowers, already starting to learn the Tokyo venue.

Please stay tuned next week for Part II of this interview with Josh Adams.