News Around the World
They came, they saw, but this time they didn’t conquer. Paul Cayard and his son Danny race the 1963 Star Scimitar at this year’s Star Vintage Gold Cup where they finished 5th in a record fleet of 26 boats, the newest of which went afloat in 1973 and the oldest in 1934. The now annual event is attracting an increasingly hot fleet with gold stars on show in every direction denoting a world champion. This year’s winner was 2017 world champion Eivind Melleby with Joshua Revkin ahead of Lars Grael and Amis Baltins. Other past world champions out included Malin Burnham, Joe Londrigan, John MacCausland and Mark Reynolds. Star Sailors League, look out!
there keelboat classes like the Star and Soling that suited the style and generally larger physique of the typical American sailor. Robust class popularity and structure within the US in these and other classes (with the notable exception of the Finn) helped to maintain domestic fleets large enough to train and compete locally without having to be constantly overseas at great expense. This can easily be seen in World Sailing’s choices of manufacturer
classes in the last quads where US medal counts have suffered: in the Laser, Radial, Nacra, RS:X, 49er and 49-FX only two medals have gone to US sailors. This is puzzling given the popularity of Lasers throughout the US, but less so for the other classes where there is no fleet presence outside the Olympic development camps. As US Olympic COO, Fisher’s remit also included driving stronger
collaboration with college sailing. Team USA did do well at the Youth Worlds in 2018, but this is not the Olympics. And the tenuous ‘youth’ link to collegiate sailing was no doubt encouraging to the Olympic bosses with an assumption that the production of all-Amer- ican titles might be akin to producing medal-ready Olympic talent. By all accounts Greg worked hard and was well-respected, yet
he resigned days before Malcolm Page was sacked. The optics for US Olympic hopes are beyond terrible. Speaking to Bruce Burton, chairman of the US Olympic team, is
always a glass-half full experience. He turns up with a no-nonsense approach, articulating issues as he sees them and then offering suggested solutions. And he’s fond of corporate analogies. ‘When the factory has a production problem for a few days it’s
probably an employee issue. When the problem drags on to a month it’s likely to be a manager issue. But when the problem is longer still then it’s a more serious issue of structure that needs correction. This is where we are now, and we’re making steps to change this.’ Burton has the highest praise for Page and Fisher, extolling their
qualities of hard work, inspiration and leadership. ‘I love both of those guys,’ he claims. So what’s the problem? Fisher thinks it’s a structural move to bring US Sailing and the Olympic programme closer together rather than remain separate autonomous entities. Page says the entire culture has to change, but that this just
32 SEAHORSE
proved extremely difficult. Burton agrees, but how to do it? ‘We have the richest country in the world with tremendous resources yet we struggle with this,’ said Burton. ‘Our culture knows how to do Big Projects but we’re not as effective working at small scales as other cultures.’ All three were fast to dispel the common view that the US does
not succeed because the 18-22 year olds here are ‘stuck’ doing collegiate sailing in non-high performance boats while their peers train and compete in the Olympic-class platforms. The competitive- ness of this genre is high enough but the challenge is how to moti- vate these young people to come over to an Olympic programme after they get their degrees (most agree that doing this while in school is no longer an option here). And when the stratospheric costs of a university education in the US are considered, with no later compensation in sailing ever likely to recover those costs, it’s not hard to imagine why there are not more talented young sailors stepping forward to devote years of their lives to pursue a dream. But all three tell me there is a way to achieve this, just no one
knows how to get beyond the current model of privately sourced support. An emphasis on establishing training centres seems to be in the action plan, but that is easier said than done… None of this, however, is likely to bring medal counts back to
what they were, concedes both Burton and Fisher. As usual Burton remains predictably upbeat, confident the key to better results will come with continued hard effort from a talented coaching and support staff. Quite how this can happen and where the resources come from is a complete unknown. Hope is not a strategy. In spite of all the fine words, however, I have to admit to feeling
that everyone is too polite or too exhausted to mention the elephant in the room. During all my discussions for this piece there was virtually never a mention of money. For such a huge wealthy country it is still a tiny handful of generous private benefactors paying for the few US Olympic aspirants who regularly finish above the fold. Until that changes don’t expect to hear the Star Spangled Banner
much at Marseille 2024… Let alone next summer in Enoshima. Dobbs Davis
q
WALTER COOPER
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