Morgan Reeser, coach to the winning Austrian 470 team, speak out after the Paris 2024 Olympics
by Andi Robertson 9 Aug 2024 17:30 HKT
Morgan Reeser celebrates with the team as Austria wins gold in the Mixed 470 at Paris 2024 © World Sailing / Sander van der Borch
As coach to Austria's newly crowned 470 gold medallists Lara Vadlau and Lukas Maehr, American Morgan Reeser has extended his enviable record as a medal winning coach in the class.
After winning a silver medal in Barcelona with Kevin Burnham and Reeser narrowly missing a second silver in 1996 he has gone on to coach Greece's Sofia Bekatoru and Emilia Tsoufla to 470 gold in Athens, GBR's Luke Patience and Stu Bithell to silver in London. He as won more than 20 world titles in different small boat classes and is also coach to three times TP52 World Championship winning Platoon.
YachtsandYachting.com and Sail-World.com caught Morgan as he came ashore, waiting for Vadlu and Maehr to complete their Mixed Zone Media duties.
Your first reactions Morgan, you came here believing Lara and Lukie could medal...
I am relieved. I am impressed with my sailors who proved tough as nails after starting with a black flag in their opening race. Our top goal we set when I started coaching them just a few months ago was 'No Letters'. At the test event a year ago they would have won but they got two black flags. So we had two plans - the easy way which was to be 'no discards until the Final fleet races' - and the hard way was' get a discard early'. And so when we got in after the first day Lara said, '...well I guess we are doing it the hard way'.
How has it been for you as here as coach, what has contributed to your success?
It has been great. The Austrian team are just great, they are super tight. And our meteorologist is spectacular. Elena Cristofo did America's Cup before and here she helped Pavlos Kontides too. She brought us four plus years of detailed and well presented information for all wind directions gave us high confidence in the options of what will happen next. In the end racing in Marseille this Olympics was a "low confidence venue".
And how did you come to join up with them for these Games?
I coached the Austrian team from 2012 to 2015. Lara called me, I coached her when she won the two world championships and I also coached the guy who is now the Olympic Director. I feel like I am going back to family.
And what do you feel has been your contribution today?
Making sure there are no distractions has been key, just being present as I said like today 'If you are looking for a distraction there are a lot of them on Medal Race day, with helicopters and so on. I had to chase off a bunch of photo boats in the pre start.
How do you help develop this steely focus and mindset that has been so impressive?
I just keep saying the same things for months on end (laughs).
But they have paid a warm tribute to you, saying how you break things down and send them out with a plan has been invaluable here.
I try to send them out with a simple plan usually. Conditions, as you will have seen, are very changeable here. And so for me to suggest what is going to happen is kind of a fallacy, I don't know. I empower them. I say 'you will have all better information than I will have at five minutes and you will make the right decisions'.
What are their outstanding strengths?
Their strength is actually when it is windier. And here with six out of seven days super light and the one windy day they had a 3,1. Potentially the BFD actually kept them from making a big mistake and leaning on a corner.
You saw their medal winning potential here a while back...
We had three coaches races which they participated in where they had a 3,3,1 so normally those are a good barometer of how teams will do in the Olympics, the Swedish did really well in them too. And they both won medals.
What else do you bring them specifically?
I know I give Lara and Lukie confidence as I have known them for so long. And my race and course analysis I think is simple and it keeps their minds clear. Elena is great back up for me. Often they might say 'what is the sea breeze going to do now?' and I'd say 'I'm going to just tell you Elena told me...'.
Has it been a more challenging venue than you expected?
I did not realise until I talked to a French friend Alex Champy who I used to race against 25 years ago I said 'Alex it was so windy here in June and July it was wonderful sailing. He said 'Morgan this is August in Marseille and it is completely different. I said, 'but the test event there was great breeze....' He said 'Morgan, that was July and this is August....
What else did you manage well between you?
Part of it was expectation. For example the Spanish wanted to win gold and they took a huge risk at the start today trying to match race the Austrians. We had talked about that as possibility before, and it was full risk by the Spanish. It would have been more applicable in a fleet race when it could have driven them back.
And did you have much input on their set up?
I did not change much, they have an amazing set up thanks in part to their previous coach who did an amazing job, Gustavo Doreste. I made little changes in how they sailed the boat, it was awareness and making decisions which they made good decisions all the way through the week.
What will you take away, you must be satisfied with the job you have done?
I am thrilled for the athletes. I am here to support the athletes. And being honest I was chatting to Christophe Sieber who is the head of the Olympic team and won a Mistral gold medal in Sydney and we were talking about how the Olympics has progressed. There is more obsession with TV and more disrespect for the athletes. They treat them like mushrooms, keep them in the dark and pile shit on them. The rules? You can be penalised for 50 different things on any given day, and what they penalise them for has no issue with performance or the fairness of the racing. It is just disrespect for the athletes. It would not happen in any other sport. The PRO for the regatta is on the shore and so the poor race officer out there on the water cannot make a decision on his or her own. So for example the other day we spent two hours on the water in no wind when there was never going to be any wind and he said 'I am not allowed to send you in, it is not my choice'. That is just complete disrespect for the athletes. I gave - I won't call it a tirade it was a speech - to the whole operation in Rio at the test event. I said 'if from now on when you always take decisions ask yourself if this is going to create a great performance or detract from a great performance, then you will do the right thing'.
So what is the priority here?
Getting themselves out of debt. I am serious, that is the priority, that is what the TV money is for. The athletes are a consumable item for that. It is really disrespectful to the athletes. As an athlete in Barcelona and Atlanta I felt respected. Not now.
Do your athletes voice the same concerns?
The athletes have their own focus and my focus is also dealing with World Sailing stuff. My story to them is that in Key West on Mallory Pier they have performers at sunset all the tourists. And the most popular are the cats jumping through flaming metal hoops. I said 'this is what you guys do all day with these inane rules which have no effect on performance'.