News Around the World
Above: Lisa Darmanin and Jason Waterhouse competing at Rio 2016 where they won a silver medal in the Nacra 17s. The plan was always to roll straight into a 2024 programme and a big effort to take that final podium step; all was going to plan until, like every sailor already nominated for Tokyo, the great disruption forced a year’s delay. The delay is obviously emotionally very disturbing as well as disruptive for medal favourites; for those still striving for medal pace it is also an unexpected opportunity to close the gap
particularly harsh. His talent and inexhaustible energy as a sailor transformed smoothly in the last 10 years or so into an influential and successful career as a coach and mentor to dozens of teams, ranging from junior class champions to mature and competitive keelboat teams. His infectious, friendly and supportive enthusiasm in this role not only produced results for his clients’ campaigns but had a lasting influence on a culture of achievement in American sailing that he not only embraced but lived every minute. Most people will know Kevin from his achievements in 470
Olympic sailing which contributed to his reputation as one of the greatest trapeze crews of the modern era: silver medal in Barcelona in 1992 with Morgan Reeser and gold in 2004 in Athens with Paul Foerster. In the latter almost everyone has seen that famous photo of Kevin doing a back-flip off the boat on winning a long final race spent covering the GBR team of Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield. At 47 Kevin was the oldest gold medallist at the Games and, yes, he was sailing barefoot as always. ‘I had a better feel for the boat in bare feet; I did wear shoes
just the once. However, the day after Paul and I arrived in Athens I opened the curtains in the morning and said “Paul, I’m not going out, there’s snow on the ground!,” he said in an interview with Gary Jobson this August. Kevin Burnham spent most of his life based in Miami and was famous for avoiding cold places. Starting an Olympic regatta with snow outside the window was not in the programme. ‘But we had a practice race scheduled that day with our Dutch tuning partners, Sven and Kalle Coster. They had us easily in the cold weather… to be honest we were pretty lousy!’ Kevin was hyper-competitive but always good-natured: he said
when Nick and Joe got to calling him Grandpa during the Games in Athens he convinced Paul to wait for them at the final leeward gate to match race them to the finish, hollering, ‘Hey, Nicki and Joey, Grandpa’s here waiting for you!’ It was another US 470 medallist – Steve Benjamin, who won
silver in LA in 1984 – who takes credit for getting Kevin to start racing in 1975. Until then he played tennis competitively and sailed
30 SEAHORSE
recreationally with his family on their 22-footer on Sundays. ‘I had pulled into the Coral Reef YC with the 470 on the roof of
the car,’ Benj said. ‘My crew was not available to sail yet so I wanted to offload the boat and get it set up. This tall, thin young guy rode up on his bike and started asking questions: he saw the New York tags on my car…’ ‘Hey, you from New York?’ ‘Yeah, Oyster Bay.’ ‘No kidding, I’m from Long Island too, grew up in Garden City.
What kind of boat is that?’ ‘It’s a 470, an Olympic class boat.’ ‘Wow, the Olympics has sailing?’ ‘Yeah… hey, what are you doing tomorrow? Do you know how
to sail? Want to come out?’ Kevin skipped his classes at the University of Miami the next
day and in a brisk northwesterly the pair headed off into Biscayne Bay, planing downwind towards Stiltsville past the tip end of Key Biscayne, followed by a long beat back. Kevin was hooked and, as they say, the rest is history. He dropped tennis and never looked back, and Benj and Kevin had been pals ever since. ‘He was the most naturally gifted athlete I ever knew,’ said Benj.
And just imagine how many people Benj has sailed with in over half a century. Neither was Kevin’s prowess confined to 470s: he was a US
champion no fewer than 11 times in different boat types, earning success in nearly every form of sailboat competition, including off- shore. Racing with Tornado Olympian Randy Smyth, the two won the gruelling Worrell 1000 in 1989, an endurance test of racing beach cats 1,000 miles from Fort Walton Beach, Florida to Virginia Beach in 12 stops. He raced offshore in big boats, in the Midwest lakes in scows, and in competitive keelboats on both coasts. What may be most impressive about Kevin was his passion for
sharing his knowledge with promising Junior sailors who could appre- ciate and embrace the intensity he had for the game. Most recently this has been among i420 sailors, the platform used to sail the
SAILING ENERGY
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