Is the U.S. Olympic Sailing star on the rise? - Part One

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 10 Feb 2016 Historically, the United States has always been a strong contender in the sport of sailing. This arguably culminated with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where the U.S. team collected three Gold medals and four Silver medals. While this was a watershed moment in the history of sailing in the U.S., it also unleashed a monster. Namely, other countries seriously upped their focus on high-level coaching, forever changing the face of Olympic sailing.

Flash forward to the 2012 London Olympics and the U.S. team suffered a trouncing that saw the team sail home empty-handed, marking the first time since the 1936 Berlin Olympics that the U.S. team was shut out of all sailing medal ceremonies. Since then, however, the U.S.-flagged team has retooled their efforts, specifically within the realms of higher-level coaching, fundraising and a dedicated youth-talent development pipeline.

Now, less than six months before the start of the 2016 Rio Olympics-and less than two weeks after the U.S. team realized promising results at World Sailing’s Sailing World Cup Miami (January 23-30, 2016). I caught up with Josh Adams, Managing Director of U.S. Olympic Sailing, to learn more about the team’s progress and competitiveness, prior to this summer’s Games.

With less than 200 days to go until the Olympic starting guns sound on Guanabara Bay, how are you feeling about the team’s preparations and performance levels?
We feel good. By most measures, the team has been improving and making progress towards Rio, and we have been closing the gap in most of the classes in which the U.S. Sailing Team Sperry is truly contending. That said, we’ve got a long way to go, but right now we feel the team is focused on the right things, and we’re feeling good about our team’s preparations.

How much weight are you placing on good performances at the Sailing World Cup Miami as far as a Rio performance bellwether? After all, American sailors did really well at both the 2011 ISAF Worlds in Australia, as well as the 2012 Miami OCR, but the London 2012 Olympics were a disaster.
Stu McNay and David Hughes are very competitive at the top of the International 470 fleet, and they showed that by winning Sailing World Cup Miami. Charlie Rosenfeld also put in a great performance in the 2.4 Meter. Another highlight would be the team’s toughness in the Medal racing, most notable was Paige Railey’s medal-race win in the Laser Radial [class].

[That said,] we don’t put too much weight on the performance at the 2016 Sailing World Cup Miami, for a couple of reasons, and you really have to go class by class to see how competitive the fleets were. The main reason we don’t place a lot of emphasis on it is that Miami served as the first of two Olympic team selection events in eight of the ten classes. These athletes are human, and when they are sailing a trials event, their performance can be affected by a couple of things related to the trials. One is that they might have their eyes on the other American sailors, and the other is that they sailed more conservatively than normal. A conservative strategy would have been a smart approach for any athlete trying to make Team USA, because you don’t want to take yourself out early on.

The other part of that is that a few of the classes weren’t as competitive as they normally would be for different reasons. For example, the 470s have a World Championship coming up, and many of the top players were in Argentina training.

It certainly seems as though the U.S. team has made some big strides since it adopted a multi-regatta trials format—how are you feeling about this quad’s team-selection process, a couple of months before the final selections are made?
This is the second quad in a row where US Sailing has used a two-event selection process, and by and large the format that we’re using to select the team for Rio is very similar to the format that we used to select the team for [London], and it’s a big improvement to the way that we used to select athletes.

A quick reminder of the history of all of this: The U.S. was really the last to adopt this type of selection procedure, in which we use a series of international events. The old system, a single Olympic trials system, using dedicated U.S.-based regattas that only Americans enter, was no longer viable because the fleets in those trials became very small. In today’s world of Olympic sailing, it’s best to use highly competitive international events. For [the] Rio selection, the Olympic Sailing Committee has chosen events that allow the athletes to keep their focus on the end game-on Rio. We didn’t want to distract athletes from Rio training, because, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all focused on. We think selection is going well. We used Miami in eight out of the ten classes, and we will be announcing new members of the team periodically in the next couple months. The Olympic sailing team will be fully named by the middle of April, and the Paralympic sailing team will be fully named by the end of May.

What classes are enjoying the stiffest competition for U.S. Olympic berths?
I’ll start by saying that, in general, stiff competition is a good thing. It means that American are pushing each other, and together raising the standard. For example, we’re seeing some classes that are effectively tied after the first event, including the 49erFX, Finn and RS:X Women, and several others that are close. For racing fans out there following Olympic sailing closely, you can go to www.ussailing.org/olympics, where we are tracking the trails process online.

Are you guys seeing strong evidence of the berth-qualification process pushing sailors to bring their game to the next level? If so, can you give me some examples?
What’s healthy about the selection process is that athletes are forced to compete under pressure. This is really the first round of pressure. We keep emphasizing that the team’s peak focus is Rio, and we don’t want to take our eye off Rio, because, after all, the athletes are training for the Olympic Games-they are not training For the trials.

Have there been any big performance surprises going into the berth-qualification process for you and the other coaches?
Well, I guess there are two new names for this quad, but these names should not be new to anyone, and they are Zach Railey sailing in the Finn [class] and Bora Gulari sailing with Louisa Chafee in the Nacra 17 [class]. We were all interested to see what their performance would look like in Miami because they really haven’t been on the race circuit, and we were not at all surprised by their strong performances because they are really talented sailors and have proven it over time on the international racing stage. So, those are two names that are new to the U.S. Olympic sailing conversation this quad, but we’re not at all surprised by their performances.

How is the team doing as far as fund raising? Are you where you want to be, less than 200 days out from the Games?
We have made a lot of progress with private fund raising. The U.S. Olympic sailing program receives no government funding. We are strictly supported by private supporters, and our three main sources are private donors, sponsors, and the U.S. Olympic Committee [USOC], which is also privately funded. All three are going well. We have a very committed group of sponsors, the USOC has got our back and they continue to support us with their performance funding, and we’ve had a very successful quad on the private fundraising front.

Quad to date, we have raised from private donors $5.5 million [U.S.] dollars for both our short-term and long-term initiatives, and we continue to raise money for Rio 2016, and for Project Pipeline, our long-term initiative. We just recently launched a more broad-based fundraising initiative. AS we enter the year of the 2016 Games, we see interest increase for the US Sailing Team Sperry, and we are obviously eager to harness that interest and let supporters really get behind the team’s effort and its desire. That’s why we launched the ‘It’s Up To Us’ campaign. The fact is, these are young, talented sailors that are totally dedicated to excelling at the Rio Games, but it’s up to [the sailing community] to get them across the finish line. So, we need sailors of all kinds to get behind the Red, White and Blue.

[Editor’s Note: sailors who are interested in supporting the U.S.-flagged team’s efforts can contribute to the effort at: www.ussailing.org/supportussailingteam.]

Stay tuned for Part Two of this interview, which will be live later this week.