Tipping point – Part I
We all know that Paul Elvstrøm changed the face of dinghy racing. But 15 years after the Great Dane’s final gold medal another great singlehanded champion made a similar impact, showing how when they were elevated to new levels, kinetics, agility, mental preparation and athleticism could overcome sheer mass when it comes to getting to the weather mark first. Kimball Livingston catches up with ‘the other’ John Bertrand
John Bertrand never raced against anybody but himself Exaggeration? Doesn’t matter. Without the core truth of it you cannot grasp his growth from 1970s teenage phenomenon to world champion in Lasers and Finns, Olympic medallist and now coach to a new generation of sailors committed to the satisfactions and demands of excellence. As a youth John Bertrand found a unique
mentor, trained on unique paths and sur- prised himself with the results. What follows,
38 SEAHORSE
edited and condensed, comes from sitting down with John in my role as a hometown journalist who first interviewed him as a teen who had just won a Laser Slalom on San Francisco Bay. That would have been about 1974. Since then we’ve both gone international, crossing paths at yachting hellholes far and wide. We’ve seen a lot of water under the bridge, which may have included a few drops of blood we didn’t go into while talking about how John Bertrand became… John Bertrand. Seahorse: Your approach to coaching grows out of your early years but there was not the meet-your-coach moment that might seem normal today, so let’s begin where that began. San Rafael High School has a big campus in the suburbs, 14 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. You had won races in Pee Wee dinghies and were growing into the Laser. Lasers were the coming thing. Your new
school was adventurous in its approach to physical education, with mixed-gender classes in predictable sports like volleyball, while offering such exotica as scuba and rock climbing that you might not expect at a free-tuition institution open to all. One of the athletic coaches, Bill Monti, becomes a character in this story, but how? John Bertrand:When I went in as a fresh- man my father offered to help start a sail- ing class, and Bill Monti went with that.
He was a sailor, not in a big way, but he liked sailing and it fitted the school’s picture of athletics. Bill imagined planning a course for the next year, but my dad was a good salesman. In a month they had a curriculum, and I became a student instructor. Meanwhile, during most week- ends I would pile into the St Francis Yacht Club’s junior van – hooked up to a trailer with 10 Lasers – and we’d take off for LA or Santa Cruz or one of the lakes in the Sierra foothills. We owned our world. As to the van, it’s like what they say about houses. If these walls could talk. SH: I’m in a position to know that St FYC’s junior programme is a tad more puckered these days. Congratulations on your timing, surviving and not leaving very many shards of Lasers behind on Interstate 5. So, come Monday, you were just one more student among many at San Rafael High, but Monti would ask about your weekend. JB: He would ask probing questions that I didn’t always pay attention to. Over time he guided me away from focusing on what I did well or not so well to the question of why. He was an out-of-the-box thinker, which is true of me, and I don’t know whether that was born in me or if Bill hit that switch. I just know the relationship grew very slowly. I was halfway through high school when I went to a youth championship where I
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