US sailors stormy course to Olympics

by Rich Roberts(as printed in The Log Newspaper) on 6 Mar 2004 Drug testers love Kevin Hall.

‘I fail every test miserably,’ he says.

Hall, 34, is from Ventura, although currently living in Bowie, Md. Last month he won the U.S. Olympic Trials for the singlehanded Finn class.

On to Athens!

Whoa. Before writing another triumph of the human spirit, there's a problem to resolve.

‘It's testosterone,’ Hall said. ‘I don't produce any, so the test shows that it all comes from the outside and I'm a quintessential cheater.’

That's Hall's humour from the dark side. Hint: what do Lance Armstrong and Kevin Hall have in common?

Both are survivors of testicular cancer. Hall survived by giving up both testicles to surgery, which means he can't produce any testosterone himself.

‘The urine tests measure the ratio of a precursor to the actual testosterone in your body to establish if any of it is exogenous---administered from the outside,’ Hall said, ‘and a hundred per cent of mine is exogenous, which is very exciting for the substance control people.’

No wonder. Testosterone is a steroid, and steroids are a blight on the integrity of modern sports.

Hall has no aspirations to hit home runs or become a 350-pound offensive lineman. All he wants to do is sail his little boat, and the International Olympic Committee will have the final say about that.

‘They are very reluctant to establish a precedent that testosterone is OK to take,’ Hall said. ‘They know it's a steroid that's been the subject of a lot of abuse and cheating.’

Hall has been dealing with the issue off and on since his second of four Olympic trials in 1996.

This time he's more concerned because, he said, ‘there was a deadline of one year before the Games to apply for ability to compete using my banned medication which came and went some time ago. Under a strict reading of that deadline, I will not be allowed to compete.’

Fred Hagedorn, chairman of US Sailing's Olympic Committee, has talked to Hall and tried to ease his concern.

‘I think he's over-reacting,’ Hagedorn said. ‘There's nothing to say he's ineligible to compete in the Olympics yet.’

The stakes ride on getting Hall a therapeutic approved exemption, or TAE, for the Games. The one-year deadline may not matter.

‘A new code went into effect on Jan. 1,’ Hagedorn said. ‘All the TAE paperwork has to be resubmitted.

He has a TAE with extensions that carry him all the way up to the Olympics. He has to have a new TAE approved, which gives us time with him and the USOC to get the new TAE approved.’

Hall hopes it's that easy.

‘US sailing seems to think that it is no big deal, just a rubber stamp issue,’ he said.

‘ISAF [the International Sailing Federation] has always been supportive, and I'm thankful to them for that.

They've granted me dispensations right through and said no problem, but I haven't been able to get a forward ruling from the Olympic committees because they hadn't felt it was worth doing until I was actually on an Olympic team.

That hasn't changed since '96.’

Aside from routine injections of testosterone, cancer hasn't been an issue for Hall since his second surgery 10 years ago apparently eradicated the disease, as well as his ability to produce his own testosterone.

For Hall, the real test was at Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. last month.

The top echelon of the U.S. Finn fleet had been a tight-knit group in recent years until Hall came along only nine months ago, soon after his tour of duty with Seattle's OneWorld America's Cup team was up.

He outsailed them all in the Finn Gold Cup---the class's world championship. Few may have noticed because, overall, he placed only 27th among 82 boats, but that was good enough to qualify the U.S. for a Finn slot in the Games.

Then he won that slot in the U.S. Trials by virtually running the table with nine wins in 16 races.

It was Hall's fourth Olympic Trials. He doesn't really count the first one in '92, when he also sailed a Finn.

‘I didn't consider that so much a campaign as getting a boat and trying to learn how to tack and gybe in time to show up for the regatta and not embarrass myself,’ he said.

That was only two years after cancer struck while he was attending Brown University.

In '96 he was fifth in the trials with a Laser, 10 years after winning the Youth Worlds in that class, but mentally he was a mess.

‘I lost my mind, basically. The last three or four months before the trials I wasn't really sailing. I was trying to deal with my medical issue. I was giving blood in L.A. while my competitors were training in Savannah.’

He also spent a lot of time trying to clear up official drug concerns.

‘By the time the trials came around I was just a puddle,’ he said.

Eventually, in 2000, he was ready. He joined skipper Morgan Larson for an all-out try in the new 49er skiff class, the high-wire act of Olympic sailing.

They waged a three-year dogfight with Jonathan and Charlie McKee until the veteran Seattle brothers won out on the last two days of the trials.

After OneWorld closed shop, he even started sailing a Star but abandoned that when, he said, his crew ‘didn't want to be away from his wife for another year.

‘I said OK, well, I'd better look for another boat, and the Finn was the only one I'm not too big for. And getting back to singlehanded sailing appealed to me a lot.’

At 5-11 1/2 and 215 pounds, Hall is good size for a Finn, which would compare to wrestling an alligator around a race course---or riding a bike up and down hills through France.

Even with the uncertainties of Athens, it's been a remarkable comeback from cancer.

‘I'm past it in the sense that it was a long time ago,’ Hall said. ‘It's not something I think much about anymore, other than my medical [needs].

I get blood drawn weekly to show that I have the same amount of testosterone in my body as everybody else. It wasn't like Lance, who went straight out of chemo, got back on the cycle and won the Tour de France.

‘I didn't start sailing right away. I took a year off and lived in Colorado to get away from it all.’

With his head straight, he became a serious sailor again. If the TAE turns out OK, he won't be the favorite at Athens. That role falls to Britain's Ben Ainslie, the three-time world champion.

‘He can have it,’ said Hall, ever the underdog. ‘I'm thrilled to have seen my hard work and the support of my family finally pay off.

It's been a dream I've had for a long time,’ but a dream still waiting for an ending.