Some thoughts on the North American sailing results from the Paris 2024 Olympics
by David Schmidt 13 Aug 2024 09:07 PDT
August 13, 2024
Ian Barrows (St. Thomas, USVI) and Hans Henken (San Fransisco, CA) celebrate after securing the bronze medal in the Men's Skiff event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games © Sailing Energy / US Sailing Team
Without a doubt, the Paris 2024 Olympics were a huge success. Fans of Olympic competition got to see some of the greatest athletes performing at their highest level, while the less athletically inclined got to revel in the human stories behind the medals, such as the story of American gymnast Simone Biles's triumphant return from a disastrous 2020/2021 Games.
Instead of the "twisties", which hobbled her at the Tokyo Games, Biles returned from Paris with three gold medals and a silver, forever cementing her status as gymnastics' GOAT, and showcasing the fact that athletes who were once down can return to greatness.
In total, American athletes returned from Paris with 126 medals: that's 40 golds, 44 silvers, and 42 bronzes. Canadian athletes returned with 27 medals: nine golds, seven silvers, and 11 bronzes. Mexican athletes brought home five medals: three silvers and two bronzes.
Out of 158 North American medals, only one — a bronze — was won by sailors.
To be clear, American sailing fans should be proud of Ian Barrows and Hans Henken, who earned a bronze in the 49er class, which is widely regarded as one of the hardest sailing classes at the Games.
"We put in so much hard work to get here and to have it all come together in this last race is just amazing," said Henken in an official US Sailing communication. "Ian and I had the goal of having a chance in the medal race - we knew that's a level that we had. Just to be there felt like an achievement in its own right, and to finish with this bronze medal is really the cherry on top."
While both Barrows and Henken have been racing and sailing at high levels for many years, they only joined forces in their 49er in 2021, and they sailed a strong Olympic regatta. Out of twelve non-medal races, the two were in the top ten nine times. Their best result was a second-place finish (Race 10), and their eighth-place finish in the medal race earned them the right to hear the Star-Spangled Banner played at their class's medal ceremony.
In fact, this was the first time that the Star-Spangled Banner was played at an Olympic sailing medal ceremony since 2016, when Finn sailor Caleb Paine also earned a bronze medal. Sadly, the USA suffered sailing medal ceremony strike-outs at the London 2012 Olympics and at the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics.
This from a country that has collected a total of 62 Olympic sailing medals (19 golds, 23 silvers, 20 bronzes), making the USA the second-most successful Olympic sailing nation in history, astern of Great Britain, which has collected a total of 66 Olympic medals (32 golds, 21 silvers, 13 bronzes).
Canada, for its part, has won a total of nine sailing medals, of which three are silvers and six are bronzes, but has not won an Olympic sailing medal since Mike Wolfs and Ross MacDonald earned a silver in the Star class at the Athens 2004 Olympics.
Mexico has never won an Olympic sailing medal.
Another way of looking at this is that Simone Biles — who also suffered an Olympic strike-out herself in Tokyo — personally collected more Olympic medals (eleven total, of which seven are gold, two are silver, and two are bronze) at three Olympiads than all three of these national sailing teams have earned in close to 30 years. In fact, Biles has earned the same number of Olympic gold medals as the U.S. team has earned in sailing since the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics.
To be fair, sailors can only compete in a single event per Olympic quadrennial, while swimmers, gymnasts, runners, and other athletes can compete in multiple events at the same Games. Also, Biles is an athlete unlike anything the sailing world has ever known. But still, the numbers speak volumes.
The Paris 2024 Olympics may have been kind to North American athletes (here's looking at you, Katie Ledecky), but there's zero question that all three of these countries need to pick up their pace in sailing.
This is especially true for American sailors, given that the next summer Games are set to unfurl on the waters off of Los Angeles, California. Not only will there be home-Games pressure at play, but this is the same venue where two U.S. teams — Jonathan McKee and Carl Buchan in the Flying Dutchman, and Robbie Haines, Rod Davis, and Ed Trevalyan in the Soling — collected gold medals in 1984.
While we at Sail-World loudly applaud Barrows and Henken for their proud bronze medal, we also hope that US Sailing is working overtime to correct the shaky course that the team has been on since the Qingdao 2008 Olympics, when Anna Tunnicliffe Tobias earned the country's most recent gold medal in the Laser Radial class.
Case-in-point: Aside from Barrows and Henken's bronze medal, U.S.-flagged sailors collectively earned a fourth-place finish (Daniela Moroz in the Women's Formula Kite), three ninth-place finishes (Markus Edegran in the Men's Formula Kite; Erika Reineke in the ILCA 6 [née, the Laser Radial], and Noah Lyons in the Men's iQFOil), a tenth-place finish (Steph Roble and Maggie Shea in the 49erFX), a twelfth-place finish (Stu McNay and Lara Dallman-Weiss in the 470), a sixteenth-place finish (Sarah Newberry Moore and David Liebenberg in the Nacra 17), and a twenty-second-place finish (Dominique Stater in the Women's iQFOil).
The headwinds are strong and involve numerous challenges, however the team has just under four years to build up the best Olympic athletes who competed at this summer's Games, while also nurturing the talents of next-generation sailors who are still in the pipeline programs.
Realizing that it's an apples-to-oranges comparison to consider an individual athlete's case of the "twisties" at a single Olympic Games with the institutional-level shortcomings that have plagued US Sailing since 2008, Biles is a shining example that huge goals can be realized when the right mindset, skills, and training are paired with the right institutional framework and the right resources.
Sail-World extends a massive congrats to Barrows and Henken (we hope their seaboots haven't yet found the metaphorical deck), and we sincerely hope that all three national sailing teams can realize greater success in Los Angeles in 2028.
May the four winds blow you safely home.
David Schmidt
Sail-World.com North American Editor