US ILCA 7 representative for Paris 2024

[tillerman]

It's all about money and talent. I was a member of RCYC when Paul Forester was making his Olympic runs in the 470 class. His sailing abilities were, (and still are I believe) freakish. Anyway, back in 2000 it took like $80k a year to support a proper 470 campaign due to the world travel, (mostly Europe) needed to compete with the proper caliber people and stay on top of the latest "tweaks" happening with the boat. I believe it took him 3 cycles to finally get his gold and he was out after that. However, on the last campaign the story is US Sailing came to him late in the game as they believed he was one of their best bets for a gold, (literally weeks before the US trials and offered $$'s in support to get him on board) he hooked up with Kevin and the rest is history. Oh, and pretty sure he's an actual rocket scientist as well so brains help..

And to all those folk around the world who like to mock Americans' love for the Sunfish, let's note that after his Olympic career was over, Paul Foerster raced in the Sunfish class and won the 2008 Sunfish Worlds. If the Sunfish is good enough for Olympics medalists, it's good enough for me.

 

[MR.CLEAN]

When the US focuses, they usually win or seriously contend. There is simply not enough interest in the US in dinghy racing.

Except that there was not a lot of interest in the US in dinghy racing during the years the US ruled the sailing medal count.

 

[Bill5]

Except that there was not a lot of interest in the US in dinghy racing during the years the US ruled the sailing medal count.
So what is the secret sauce that disappeared after ‘92? Do you think is more or the same interest in racing dinghies in the US today compared to 32 years ago?

 

[Gouvernail]

Maybe someday the USA will again have a profoundly rich and well educated middle class.
We have been sitting on our asses, too lazy to work, and buying everything from the rest of the world since Reaganomics took over and destroyed the wealth of the common American.
In the mid seventies there were hundreds of US companies building hundreds of thousands of sailing toys.
By 1990 there were only a very few remaining.
No longer are there thousands of people in the USA whose next house payment will come from selling the toys they are building or stocking.
Without those thousands of motivated people doing their very best to interest someone in going sailing, there really are not as many people being introduced to the game.
Sailing is better than it ever was. The equipment is WAY better. The clothing is WAY better. The shoreside facilities are generally better. Weather prediction and access to the predictions and actual observations of approaching systems is WAY better. Available Communications methods to gather for group play have shortened to distribution of invitations from weeks to seconds.
I maintain the ONLY significant difference between having a booming sailing sport and the current struggling game is ( stand up. Take a deep breath and shout as you read the following sentence )
WE DO NOT HAVE A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHOSE NEXT MEAL RELIES UPON SUCCESSFULLY CAUSING PEOPLE TO GO SAILING.

West Coast Sailing / Zim / George may be single-handedly changing that situation.

We need a few hundred more investing their life savings to truly get the boom rolling.

I believe the next thing we need to stand on George’ shoulders and continue is a few hundred people who are eager to stock and promote sailing toys and equipment for their particular community.
We need lots of people who are sufficiently invested in making sailing happen such that they are motivated to make certain the game happens.

 

[D Kirkpatrick]

Except that there was not a lot of interest in the US in dinghy racing during the years the US ruled the sailing medal count.
So what is the secret sauce that disappeared after ‘92? Do you think is more or the same interest in racing dinghies in the US today compared to 32 years ago?

Just like it takes time for things to ramp up, it takes time for things to ramp down. The US won tons of sailing medals in the many decades leading up to 84, which was the year that the US won medals in every class. If I remember correctly all of them were either gold or silver, too.

The interest in dinghy sailing in the 70s compared to the 90s and then compared to now is enormous. The Lightning fleet where I grew up (the fleet drew from 3 YCs) would get 60 boats qualifying for the summer series. My dad was Fleet Captain, so this is something I'm aware of even if I don't remember it firsthand. The RIISA regatta used to draw 250 dinghies when I would do it in high school in the late 80s, with big Finn and 470 fleets. The last time I did it, it was a 45 boat Laser regatta. The Buzzards Bay and Hyannis regattas hosted several hundred dinghies and small keelboats in the 80s and early 90s, now BBR is a small Masters Laser regatta and Hyannis is a shadow of its old self. The Miami and Alamitos Bay OCR Regattas, and SPORT in St. Pete died. Euros used to come over to do that swing, now they all go to Palma or Lanzarote for winter training. Campaigners always had to go to Europe to get the top competition even back then, but a pair of college kids could get a 470 and get a long way up the learning curve without any passport stamps (no passport needed to go to CORK back then). If you got good and were ok at fundraising, you did the next cycle and made a go of it. But there were 20 boats in the US that you were racing against.

There was, in fact, a lot of support made available to US sailors. A sailor who was affected by the boycott of the '80 games told me that two families that anted up about $100k each to be made available to promising teams in Olympic classes. In 1978, that was a lot of money. Beyond that, relative to other countries it was a fortune. Everyone was dirtbagging back then.

The US was always really good at the keelboat events, which have been dropping from the Games for years.

The US's wealth might hurt it in sailing, in a lot of ways. Successful college sailors now choose to either get paid to go sailing on other people's boats, or get good jobs because the career track is what it is now and then go sail on other people's boats for free. The Wickford Regatta (a brightspot in dinghy sailing thanks to the enormous effort that Skip Whyte puts into it) loses a ton of marginal boats when NYYC has a big boat regatta the same weekend because a ton of people, for a variety of reasons, choose to do the NYYC event when faced with the choice.

I'm about as young as you can be and have peers who've medaled in sailing, (Caleb P and Anna T excepted) and I'm 52. The link to when it was assumed that the US sailors would crush the medal count is long since broken.

Leaving the specific Laser question aside, I was in Clearwater FL for the 505 Midwinters (best regatta ever in my completely unbiased opinion) the week or 2 before the Olympic Classes regatta and there IS a ton of energy around there for Olympic sailing. There were a bunch of kiters and Radial sailors there practicing, but there were a TON of IQFoils out sailing. They have kids doing it after school. It's a unique situation, and I can't tell you how much of it is that the IQFoil as a vehicle is so compelling. My guess is that it's a lot of it, but it's just kids working hard and dorking out on sailing which is how the Olympic path starts.

 

[Xeon]

It’s nothing to do with ‘ sauce ‘ and everything to do with the increased professionalism of the other country’s.

If I remember correctly, the last time the UK won a medal with a Corinthian self funded type project was Lawrie Smith in the Soling

The year 1992.
(and we hadn’t won much in the previous decade either 😕)

 

[Lazy Guy]

Too much work
too busy gaming

 

[Curious2]

What people seem to miss in the "cost of the boat doesn't matter" bit, is that the parents get priced out sooner if the boats are expensive to buy & run; so the fleet hollows out and the numbers go down.
It's also worth bearing in mind that a good number of those involved know that they are unlikely to be going to the Olympics but by staying with the programme they get to learn a lot, spend time with some good people, learn transferable skills, make connections and build up a sailing CV.

Very well said.

Cycling might not be the best example of this, definitely not track cycling where literal fortunes are spent on looking for microgains.
exhibit a:
the bike from Barcelona '92 that kicked off insane lab programs https://road.cc/content/feature/check-out-chris-boardmans-olympic-winning-lotus-type-108-294779

there's a rule now that you can't have prototype bikes anymore, so everything has to be 'available' to the general public.

Team GB’s Lotus Hope HB.T, yours for £15,500 - Crank Punk

Oh, and you wanted wheels with that? That'll be.... another £4550. What's that? You don't want the Standard frameset? Oh, I see, not good enough for the likes of you is it? Right then, in that case I recommend the Sprint frameset, £19,600... plus VAT. If you could just sign there and tick that...

crankpunk.com

exhibit B:

Incidentally exhibit A got team GB a first olympic cycling gold for 72 years and first medal since a bronze at Montreal '76, they've top the medal table by some distance for the last four games. Talent plays a part in this for sure, but they have run an incredibly large scale and professional program to get there easily outspending the competition who are still playing catch-up.

I'm a track cyclist myself, and the bikes in your pic are dramatically more user-friendly for typical weekend warrior cyclists than the fastest of small craft are for typical weekend warrior sailors.

The bikes you picture actually underline that other sports often are FAR more restrictive than sailing when it comes to Olympic kit. The bike in your top pic, and all like it, were far slower than the fastest possible bike (a streamlined recumbent) but they were still all banned by the UCI's Lugano Charter in 1996. All bikes now have to be "double diamond" design with restrictions on the frame dimension to stamp out Lotus-style bikes.

The Lugano Charter (https://archive.uci.org/docs/defaul...2018-05-02-eng_english.pdf?sfvrsn=fd56e265_54) states that “Equipment shall be of a type that is sold for use by anyone practicing cycling as a sport", so basically every bike must be suitable for a weekend warrior to use.

I've seen plenty of Australian Olympic team and Masters World Champ, World Record and world team kit, some of it almost as exotic as the bike in your lower pic and some of it like the bike in your top pic. A hack like me could ride them far, far more easily than a typical racing sailor could sail a bleeding-edge boat or board, and do it around an Olympic track.

The gap between the typical weekend warrior cyclist and bleeding edge cycling kit is vastly smaller than the gap between the typical weekend warrior sailor and bleeding edge sailing kit, in terms of practicality, useability and cost.

 

[dogwatch]

It’s nothing to do with ‘ sauce ‘ and everything to do with the increased professionalism of the other country’s.

Correct. Once upon a time you chose a class, did well domestically, won a domestic trial, off to the Olympics, whoopee, on the podium. Those days are gone.

GBR has won Gold several times in classes that barely exist here, in some cases don’t exist at all. It is now about having a system to foster a pyramid of talent from whom you can select sailors capable of medalling in a given class, then supporting them on the international circuit, in coaching and financially. USS can’t or won’t do that but until it catches up with even the late 20th century, Americans will continue telling the rest of the world sailing would be better off out of the Olympics because the USA can’t win medals any more.

On the recurring theme, young US sailors have other and better career options. For fucks sake, so do young sailors everywhere.

 

[Gouvernail]

In any group of competitors there is a distribution of how well each individual or team plays the game .
There is always a bell curve and there is always a probability of occurrences of deviations from the mean.

It is certainly possible for the single competitor in one country ( Elvström) to also be the finest competitor when compared to the sum of all other groups.

However, the very most effective way to create large numbers of exceptional competitors in any sport is to start with huge numbers of competitors.
Not only are the odds better of finding a few exceptional competitors, large numbers increase the quality of the opposition which can push the other competitors to higher levels.

In 1977 over 200,000 new sailboats were sold in the USA.
In 2020 the owner of Facebook made enough money to buy 200,000 Lasers and give each skipper $40,000 in funding.
Our priorities produce our results.

 

[Bill5]

So the halcyon days of US Olympic sailing coincided with a much greater number of dinghy racers - correct? And at the same time as the numbers started to drop, the UK and others developed better programs. Have I got that right?

 

[Gouvernail]

Sorta… The UK has builders snd dealers
And always, for regattas, way more boats within a days drive

 

[dogwatch]

Yes. However I am also saying that the connection between numbers in grassroots sailing and medal performance is weaker than many believe.

Numbers sailing dinghies in the UK have also dropped over the last couple of decades, I believe. This is impossible to back-up with systematic figures but if I look at some major regattas I've done long-term, numbers are in gradual decline. My impression, based only what I've read on SA, is that the decline in the USA has been steeper.

 

[shebeen]

Very well said.


I'm a track cyclist myself, and the bikes in your pic are dramatically more user-friendly for typical weekend warrior cyclists than the fastest of small craft are for typical weekend warrior sailors.

The bikes you picture actually underline that other sports often are FAR more restrictive than sailing when it comes to Olympic kit. The bike in your top pic, and all like it, were far slower than the fastest possible bike (a streamlined recumbent) but they were still all banned by the UCI's Lugano Charter in 1996. All bikes now have to be "double diamond" design with restrictions on the frame dimension to stamp out Lotus-style bikes.

The Lugano Charter (https://archive.uci.org/docs/defaul...2018-05-02-eng_english.pdf?sfvrsn=fd56e265_54) states that “Equipment shall be of a type that is sold for use by anyone practicing cycling as a sport", so basically every bike must be suitable for a weekend warrior to use.

I've seen plenty of Australian Olympic team and Masters World Champ, World Record and world team kit, some of it almost as exotic as the bike in your lower pic and some of it like the bike in your top pic. A hack like me could ride them far, far more easily than a typical racing sailor could sail a bleeding-edge boat or board, and do it around an Olympic track.

The gap between the typical weekend warrior cyclist and bleeding edge cycling kit is vastly smaller than the gap between the typical weekend warrior sailor and bleeding edge sailing kit, in terms of practicality, useability and cost.

Appreciate the reply, but I humbly disagree that cycling is a good example. Let me put it a different way and actually confuse myself and maybe even reinforce your point.

the guy in lumo yellow is about to win stage 1 of the Giro d'talia here. He's from Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in the world on most metrics. He is the cream of a large crop of Eritreans who are making waves in world cycling despite huge obstacles (visas and world travel are a real pain). A guy like him can show enough talent on a piece of crap bike to get noticed and sponsored and now he has a top of the range machine and can shine.

a poor kid with a leaking wooden oppie with old sails is never going to get a look in until he gets access to a better boat. there is never going to be an olympic sailor who comes from being a fisherman with a promising career of racing dhows.

the problem of funding in my mind is both the insane cost of top of the range boats and the insane cost of entry level boats. My kids are oppie age now and I'm a little bit disappointed that it's still the only viable entry to sailing and the value for money on a new racing oppie is a real downer. I kinda hoped there would be better rotomoulded options by now but they don't have the fleets. but just like the ILCA it is such a strong class because it is such a strong class.

 

[Curious2]

On the recurring theme, young US sailors have other and better career options. For fucks sake, so do young sailors everywhere.

Well said, and among the wealthy nations there seems to be no correlation between national wealth and Olympic success.

Successful Olympic sailing countries like GBR, Australia and NZ also have strong big-boat scenes that can attract young talent. The difference in those countries may be that you're also expected to have a good international small-boat record to get the good big-boat jobs.

Sorta… The UK has builders snd dealers
And always, for regattas, way more boats within a days drive

But we can absolutely destroy the "more boats within a day's drive" stuff by looking at Australia (9 people per square mile) and NZ (49 people per square mile) and seeing that the USA has vastly higher population density (91 people per square mile). If higher population density is the key, then the USA should have ten times the sailing medals that the USA does.

It's interesting that a disproportionate number of the Australia Olympic team and squad come from Perth, which is the world's most remote major city with 1.9 million people. The second biggest city in the state has 75,000 people, the third biggest 32,000, and the state is one-third the size of the Lower 48. There's a city 1700 miles away with half a dozen full rigs, but the next decent Laser fleet is 2150 miles from Perth. It's as if had to get from your place to the other side of Bar Harbour, Maine, and passed only six other big rig Lasers.

And yet that's the situation the current Olympic gold medallist in Laser Standards, Perth's Matt Wearn, faces - and he wins gold while doing it. So does Laser Under 21 and Radial world champ Zac Littlewood and a completely disproportionate number of the Australian Olympic mob.

The fact that you can live in the world's most isolated significant sailing city and still win gold proves that isolation is not the USA's issue.

 

[dogwatch]

Nothing directly about sailing here. Move on if not interested.

Bio of an Eritrean cyclist is below, don't know if the same guy. Whether he met the description "poor kid" isn't really clear but I found the background on the colonial legacy of cycling in Eritrea surprising and interesting.

A star is born: Biniam Girmay profile

He has already written himself into the history books, but Biniam Girmay has barely finished his first chapter Words Andy McGrath Photography Mike

www.cyclist.co.uk

 

[MattFranzek]

Very well said.


I'm a track cyclist myself, and the bikes in your pic are dramatically more user-friendly for typical weekend warrior cyclists than the fastest of small craft are for typical weekend warrior sailors.

The bikes you picture actually underline that other sports often are FAR more restrictive than sailing when it comes to Olympic kit. The bike in your top pic, and all like it, were far slower than the fastest possible bike (a streamlined recumbent) but they were still all banned by the UCI's Lugano Charter in 1996. All bikes now have to be "double diamond" design with restrictions on the frame dimension to stamp out Lotus-style bikes.

The Lugano Charter (https://archive.uci.org/docs/defaul...2018-05-02-eng_english.pdf?sfvrsn=fd56e265_54) states that “Equipment shall be of a type that is sold for use by anyone practicing cycling as a sport", so basically every bike must be suitable for a weekend warrior to use.

I've seen plenty of Australian Olympic team and Masters World Champ, World Record and world team kit, some of it almost as exotic as the bike in your lower pic and some of it like the bike in your top pic. A hack like me could ride them far, far more easily than a typical racing sailor could sail a bleeding-edge boat or board, and do it around an Olympic track.

The gap between the typical weekend warrior cyclist and bleeding edge cycling kit is vastly smaller than the gap between the typical weekend warrior sailor and bleeding edge sailing kit, in terms of practicality, useability and cost.

You beat me to this.

I think the idea that density of population compared to olympic medals in sailing is a bit skewed. What % of Aussies and Kiwis live with in 5 miles of water with access to sailing. From what I know of Australia, and I’ve only been down there once to drop off Subarus from Japan, everyone (99%, excluding some farmers and miners) lives with in 5-10 miles of the ocean, where you may get light air but there is usually a fairly consistent sea breeze. That’s just not true in the US. The geography of the US West Coast lends there to only being a few places where you can have safe harbors to launch boats from. Excluding Florida, most of the states on the East Coast of the US people don’t live with in 5-10 miles of the ocean and have access to the water. In NYC, and I’m talking in the 4 burrows (I’m excluding Staten Island because I’m not sure), and Jersey City, I can think of 5 or 6 spots where people can keep a boat, but only 2 you can sail dinghies out of. One being my old college (and Rob Crafa has for 20+ years done an amazing job at getting kids from the Bronx on the water) and I think I saw a few Lasers at the Manhattan YC in Jersey City. Sailing just isn’t a thing. Kids in cities want to play softball. baseball, football, basketball, or video games. If we could figure out how to get kids to care about sailing I’m sure we could figure out how to get kids to care about rugby, but we can’t. There is a great quote by a famous All Blacks coach about not wanting the US to care about rugby because everyone else would be in trouble if NFL players learned and trained the game like they do football.

I don’t know much about the sailing scene in Philly, except a few good buddies from college moved there and stopped racing because it was too hard to find a ride on a boat, or the racing was too far away.

There also just isn’t the priority on access to boats. Waterfront property is not used for public access like it is in other countries.

But overall the numbers in the US are down. College sailors traditionally don’t race much after college. The Melges 15 appears to be keeping more around. The few kids scraping money together for Olympic Campaigns in various classes come from established programs in Newport, Florida, LA (ABYC seems to be the spot), and SF. Outside those 4 hot spots, olympic sailing dreams in the US are just that, dreams?

Access to boats and the water is what needs to be worked on. The death of a strong middle class is probably the answer. Raising taxes on the uber wealthy, corporations, and shit like that to get the money to actually flow back to the middle class would work, but won’t happen as long as billionaires own Congress. Strong unions would fix that too but the PR machines of every single corporation goes into over drive to keep their employees from unionizing when ever it’s even whispered. Lots of ways to fix sailing and get people to care, not sure any of it will actually happen.

Thanks for the debate. I’ll be lurking.

 

[Gouvernail]

@Curious2
Your thesis is long enough people might think I wrote it.
Anyway… I hope my comments about Density of boats available to create fleets did not come off as a “this is the entire explanation” note.
Australia has a few super supportive builders. It dies not have the American sports disease we call football. There are many differences between the USA society and Aussie society that explain a lot of reasons Sailing racing is a bigger part of the Australian society.
I am in the USA. I have paid a whole lot of attention to USA fleet growth and demise over the last 60 years or so. I have seen things I believe have caused growth. I have seen things I believe destroy fleets. I have held positions where I could try stuff to see if my theories might work. I have held positions where I was powerless to convince those in charge to even consider trying my favorite ideas.
The USA sailing community cannot alter its population density so I do not see population density as a factor we can adjust to grow the sport.
The thing we can do is put some people in positions where their personal financial condition is directly related to participation numbers.
We can set up Yacht Club employees with commissions for new members, new racers, new boats on preferred fleets, participation numbers in races….
yacht Club’s snd fleets couid stock boats
Club’s could give space to local dealers for certain demonstrator boats
Clubs could finance boat purchases.
Clubs couid offer free storage for probationary members toys
Club’s could provide “come visit our club” packages for distribution to new employees and various local employers.

I could write all night

The fact is, we are not even trying

 

[Curious2]

Appreciate the reply, but I humbly disagree that cycling is a good example. Let me put it a different way and actually confuse myself and maybe even reinforce your point.

the guy in lumo yellow is about to win stage 1 of the Giro d'talia here. He's from Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in the world on most metrics. He is the cream of a large crop of Eritreans who are making waves in world cycling despite huge obstacles (visas and world travel are a real pain). A guy like him can show enough talent on a piece of crap bike to get noticed and sponsored and now he has a top of the range machine and can shine.

a poor kid with a leaking wooden oppie with old sails is never going to get a look in until he gets access to a better boat. there is never going to be an olympic sailor who comes from being a fisherman with a promising career of racing dhows.

the problem of funding in my mind is both the insane cost of top of the range boats and the insane cost of entry level boats. My kids are oppie age now and I'm a little bit disappointed that it's still the only viable entry to sailing and the value for money on a new racing oppie is a real downer. I kinda hoped there would be better rotomoulded options by now but they don't have the fleets. but just like the ILCA it is such a strong class because it is such a strong class.

I think we're actually going the same way, and you make a great point that reinforces part of what I was trying to point out. While big spending can still give cyclists an advantage, the design restrictions are tight enough to ensure that people like the Eritreans can show their potential on a piece of crap, even if they can't win at world level on it. Giro history is full of greats like Gino Bartali, who had dirt poor backgrounds but could show their brilliance on crappy gear because of the restrictions.

So the most popular "equipment intensive" sport has rules that are tight enough to allow brilliance to outweigh bucks enough to allow the brilliant guys without money to show their potential, even if the big dollar teams may have the winning edge.

It sounds like we both feel that Olympic sailing should have rules that allow brilliance to outweigh bucks. From what I can see, the Laser does a pretty good job of doing that; for example when I was serious in Lasers years ago, Michael Blackburn was tuning up for his bronze winning medal campaign using an old loaner boat owned by a small club, and still beating everyone else in Australia. The guys from developing nations often had a better boat than Michael's in the pre-Olympic tuning, and no one had a better boat than Schiedt and Ainslie. It still cost money (I remember sitting with Gareth Blackburn's dad, who was paying for his campaign, while watching Olympic heats) but at least the people from developing nations had a fighting chance, which is the way it should be.

 

[MattFranzek]

I think we're actually going the same way, and you make a great point that reinforces part of what I was trying to point out. While big spending can still give cyclists an advantage, the design restrictions are tight enough to ensure that people like the Eritreans can show their potential on a piece of crap, even if they can't win at world level on it. Giro history is full of greats like Gino Bartali, who had dirt poor backgrounds but could show their brilliance on crappy gear because of the restrictions.

So the most popular "equipment intensive" sport has rules that are tight enough to allow brilliance to outweigh bucks enough to allow the brilliant guys without money to show their potential, even if the big dollar teams may have the winning edge.

It sounds like we both feel that Olympic sailing should have rules that allow brilliance to outweigh bucks. From what I can see, the Laser does a pretty good job of doing that; for example when I was serious in Lasers years ago, Michael Blackburn was tuning up for his bronze winning medal campaign using an old loaner boat owned by a small club, and still beating everyone else in Australia. The guys from developing nations often had a better boat than Michael's in the pre-Olympic tuning, and no one had a better boat than Schiedt and Ainslie. It still cost money (I remember sitting with Gareth Blackburn's dad, who was paying for his campaign, while watching Olympic heats) but at least the people from developing nations had a fighting chance, which is the way it should be.

I tried to lurk but wanted to add in cycling is a really bad example here because it’s so body composition dependent. Yes, you can train for VO2max, but everyone’s body has a limit for what we can achieve. Lance Armstrong, no matter your feelings on cycling when we won 6 Tours (personally I think he won), still has the 24th best VO2max ever recorded. Sailing is not the same.

Gouvernail, the Buffalo Canoe Club does almost all of those things and I feel has the intended result. Plus, they targeted getting girls into junior sailing, and guess who also wanted to do junior sailing then? Junior sailing boys! Now 15 years later a good chunk of those then boy and girl junior sailors are members and either still sail actively with other people or have their own Lightnings.