The New York YC’s American Magic was 0-2 with its America’s Cup challenges, and given its early eliminations from AC36 and AC37, the money burn rate was high and the return on investment low. It’s all par for the course with the America’s Cup. After decamping from Barcelona to the team’s base in Pensacola, Florida, there was plenty of lip service about another go at the Cup in Naples, Italy in 2028, but in October, what was a hard maybe became a hard pass.

They didn’t agree with the final Protocol or the defender’s proposed scheme to take management of the regatta out of the hands of Emirates Team New Zealand and into the hands of a quasi-independent governing body called the “America’s Cup Partnership.” With American Magic’s exit, for the first time in Cup history, there may be no American syndicate.

“After extensive engagement with the Defender, Challenger of Record and fellow teams, we’ve concluded that the present structure does not provide the framework for American Magic to operate a highly competitive and financially sustainable campaign for the 38th America’s Cup,” said Doug DeVos, American Magic owner, in a team statement. “We care deeply about the America’s Cup and what it represents. However, for a team committed to long-term excellence, alignment around financial viability and competitive performance is essential. At this time, we don’t believe those conditions are in place for American Magic to challenge.”

Terry Hutchinson, the team’s sailing director, says American Magic’s exit is more of a “hiatus” that will allow them to instead prioritize building “a sustainable platform for high-performance sailing in the United States.” While winning the America’s Cup was always the goal, Hutchinson says they can now focus on their parallel effort to build what they envision as a pipeline of top-level American sailors, designers, engineers and boatbuilders. The shift in priorities, Hutchinson adds, will also allow them to bolster the underperforming U.S. Olympic sailing program by diverting funds and resources to private organizations supporting athletes, including AmericaOne Racing and the Sailing Foundation of New York.

According to Hutchinson, American Magic’s issues with the Protocol and the America’s Cup Partnership primarily revolved around concerns with the event’s commercial structure and future governance, and specifically, what the team felt was the lack of a clear and sustainable financial model. American Magic sought a structure where investors could reasonably expect to recoup their investments within a couple of cycles, but found the proposed model too risky and not conducive to such a goal. The model, Hutchinson says, would require ongoing support from private individuals and yacht club members rather than evolving into a self-sustaining, profitable sporting entity.

SailGP, he says, has the right model, borrowing many of its elements straight from Formula 1’s playbook. And SailGP may well be in the team’s future.

The focus for American Magic and its skeleton crew of engineers, boat builders and sailors in Pensacola is to now take a measured and strategic approach to winding down its America’s Cup operations and assets. Hutchinson says that process includes evaluating the potential to support another American team, should one step up to fill the void, which is not likely at this point. “We would always be open to supporting another American team if somebody wanted to step forward and take it on,” he says. “But it’s not a small undertaking.”

Still, they’re not rushing to fire sale all of their AC assets either, which include a pair each of AC75 and AC40s, containers full of parts and spares, assorted gear and foil sets, not to mention priceless design and performance data and intellectual property. While now officially out of AC38, Hutchinson says they remain cautious and “prefer not to make hasty decisions that could close doors to future America’s Cup involvement.”

Instead, Hutchinson says, they intend to keep their foot wedged in the America’s Cup door and would conceivably field teams into the planned Women’s and Youth America’s Cup AC40 regattas—should American Magic be invited to race. “We want to be good stewards for the America’s Cup,” he says, so the plan is to wait, observe how the event evolves and keep the possibility open for a future return.

For now however, the Olympics, and custom boatbuilding, take precedence, and for this, there are ample resources at American Magic’s Pensacola base. Hutchinson stresses that the goal is to build on existing Olympic systems already in place with US Sailing and elsewhere, rather than disrupting them.

“I think the first way to make the connection is to not impede progress that is already happening,” he says. “There’s a great system already in place, so our role over the next two and a half years is to learn the system that they have and support it where we can. We should make sure that every US sailor that goes to the Olympics in a boat that is immaculately prepared and perfect.”

The post American Magic Shifts From the Cup to Cultivation appeared first on Sailing World.

She won the most races of any ILCA 6 competitor at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials. She’s only 25 years old, but with two back-to-back Youth World Champion titles to her name, she’s a respected force in one of the most competitive sailing classes in the world. Her name is Charlotte Rose, and a heartbreaking defeat in the lead-up to the Paris 2024 Olympics tempted her to walk away from sailing—forever.

It’s a feeling most will never experience: a brutal, cold, sterile “no” to everything you’ve worked toward for at least four years, sometimes your whole life. Arriving at the honor of representing one’s country and hopefully standing on a podium requires a fierce core belief in oneself that’s crafted by years of introspection and the encouragement of friends, family and coaches. It’s not a goal made lightly, and the risk of it all washing away with the result of one regatta takes another kind of strength to open oneself up to the possibility.

“To have it slip through [my] fingers is a pain that will sit with me for the rest of my career,” Rose wrote on social media a week after the Olympic Trials concluded.

Now, a year after the Paris Olympics, Rose is back on the international circuit chasing a podium on home soil for the Los Angeles 2028 Games. A lot has transpired since Trials, and reflection is a critical part of her rise from the ashes and planning of a new, stronger campaign.

Looking back on the eight-day marathon regatta in February 2024, Rose acknowledges she did “a lot of things right, but a lot of things wrong.”

On the final day, she had an early start on the penultimate race, and one too many mistakes sealed her fate. “Immediately afterward, I went to put my boat away and I just broke down crying in the parking lot,” she says. After finishing fifth at the 2023 ILCA 6 World Championship and qualifying the US for a berth in the ILCA 6 at the Games, then finishing on the podium at the 2024 World Championship (a feat no American has accomplished since 2016), “nothing matters” was the repeated phrase that fell out of Rose’s mouth over and over as cheers rang out for victors Erika Reineke and Ford McCann not far away. She wanted to quit, wanted to walk away from sailing forever, hang up her hiking pants and leave it all behind.

A chorus of “I’m sorry” engulfed her from loved ones on the ground and from texts on her phone, but it was her mentor, Leandro Spina, of America One Racing and US Sailing Team staff and 2008 Olympian Sally Barkow’s confidence that cut through the noise. “We’re going to figure it out,” they assured her. “This is not the end for you.”

Rose recalls Spina and Barkow standing by her side as her world crumbled. “They told me my abilities weren’t defined at Trials,” she says. “That didn’t sink in fully in the moment through the emotions, but now I know they were right.”

The grief from that loss was all-consuming. And even after time and distance to reflect and recall all of the positives of her event, Rose doesn’t claim she should have gone to the Games in place of Reineke. “It was anyone’s game, and this time it was Erika’s. She did a really good job.”

With swollen eyes from the weight of her new reality, Rose stood alongside Reineke and runner-up Christina Sakellaris at Miami YC for awards and to wish her rival well in representing the United States in Marseille.

The country’s focus turned to Reineke, as what naturally happens with each athlete who wins Trials. The Team and the nation rally resources and support around the selected athletes, and runners up are left to grapple with the dreaded “what now?”

It’s not malicious, but it’s painful all the same.

Rose returned to Houston, Texas, and “went numb.” She still had flights booked to Palma de Mallorca, Spain and Hyères, France for the final two regattas of the season, but couldn’t wrap her head around returning to the water. In the month northbetween Trials and Palma, she got sick twice with the flu. “I tried to move on but I couldn’t do anything.”

She was surrounded by love from her parents, boyfriend, and dog, but it was going to take a Herculean effort to get back in the ring.

Then it came time to finish the job. She went to Palma for the annual Trofeo Princesa Sofia and lost 10 pounds. People asked her why she was there. “I’m sailing, I gotta finish the season,” she answered.

Instead of staying in the region for French Olympic Week two weeks later, Rose felt the pull to come home and made a beeline for Houston to reset. Then she trekked back across the Atlantic for Hyères on the Mediterranean just 40 minutes east aof the future Olympic venue. She stayed in a house with Sakellaris and Lilly Myers, and Canadian athlete Clara Gravely, and her spirits improved. Rose even went on to win the entire event, taking home a gold medal just two months after losing Olympic Trials.

“It felt really good,” she says. “It was a strong ending to the season, but I still didn’t know what I was doing.”

Rose willed herself to follow through on the 2023-2024 circuit, then finally had to face the reality that’d been beckoning in the silence of flight delays, quiet rigging mornings, and waiting for wind.

Where to, now?

The answer to her question came while watching the Paris Olympics. August rolled around, she watched the Opening Ceremony, and felt the draw once again. “It ignited something in me,” she says. “I decided I’m going to do it, and this time I’m going to do it right.”

But what does it mean to “do it right?”

“Trials really shook me. When I said ‘nothing matters,’ I knew that wasn’t true. I’m more than my results. And while I still struggle with that today, I know that this time I want to stand on the podium with an accomplished mission of a balanced, fulfilled journey getting to that moment. I want to be the best version of myself when the medal rests around my neck.”

“My coach and I are working on developing an unbreakable process,” Rose says when we talk in August. “No matter what happens, it will not break me, and that’s how I’ll defeat the Olympic Games.”

It’s a dream she’s had since she was nine years old, and it only strengthened as she saw the effect her Olympic pursuit had on her father and on herself in return. “It’s the pinnacle of sport on such a big stage,” she says, “and I know that if I’m the best version of myself chasing this dream, there’s no barrier I can’t overcome.”

Father, Darren Rose, has been her biggest motivator, and she’s found that he’s also inspired to be the best version of himself when he sees Charlotte in relentless pursuit of the same. “I love my family and they support me so much, even though I’m not around very often. I want to show them that growth is always possible and there’s nothing you can’t achieve.”

With a year and a half of distance since a crushing event, Rose sits with a mature perspective. “This is a very cool thing that I get to do, and I have to keep in mind that at the end of the day it’s just a sailboat race. Not many people get to do this, I’m in a very privileged position to pursue this dream, and I’m just immensely grateful for my community that believes in me.”

LA looms, and so do the Trials. But maturity in the Olympic arena is a powerful and uplifting force.

The post The Hard Climb for Charlotte Rose appeared first on Sailing World.

Paris Henken glances over her shoulder and takes in a Waszp going through its paces on Alamitos Bay in a wispy midmorning breeze. It’s a warm and sunny Mother’s Day, and the Alamitos Bay YC is already abuzz with the brunch crowd taking seats and sailors rigging in the boatyard. Henken and her sailing partner, Helena Scutt—both of whom are ABYC members and new residents in Long Beach, California—have walked to the club from their homes nearby. They’re now full-time residents of the sailing venue of the 2028 Olympics. They’re both clearly relaxed and excited to be where they are in life right now—teammates again in the 49erFX.

“I grew up in San Diego sailing Sabots, and I’m looking behind me here at ABYC, where I learned to race from age 10, then as a youth sailor, I’d come here every year in the 29er for the CISA Racing Clinic,” says Henken, 29. “I have been familiar with this area for a very long time.”

For Henken, the time between those foundational clinics and returning to her childhood sailing ground has included completing a college degree at the College of Charleston, where she sailed three Olympic campaigns all in the 49erFX—placing 10th with Scutt in Rio in 2016 when she was just 19, and two with Anna Tunnicliffe (Tokyo and Paris), losing both times in the Trials to Maggie Shea and Stephanie Roble.

Scutt’s path to the Olympic scene was different, but by no means less spectacular. Learning to sail at the age of 15, Scutt immersed herself in the sport, competing in her first Olympic Games at age 22. She completed a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford, became a Moth Class world champion, and had the distinction of being the only woman on the New York YC’s American Magic design team for the 37th America’s Cup.

Los Angeles Calling

With LA2028 on the horizon, unfinished Olympic business was all-consuming for Henken. The FX had been in the back of her mind since the 2024 Trials. She came up empty-handed after some crew scouting with the assistance of America One Racing (A1R), and then recalled an out-of-the-blue conversation with Scutt. On that call, Scutt had nonchalantly mentioned that she’d been thinking about FX sailing again.

“I thought Helena was calling me to catch up, because she’s my sister-in-law and we hadn’t seen each other in so long, then all of a sudden she brings up FX sailing, and I was like, ‘Whoa!’” Henken says with a laugh.

Realizing she had a lifetime to follow her engineering career, Scutt jumped on the opportunity to capitalize on more than a decade of exceptional sailing experiences. And competing on her home turf for a medal was an opportunity not to be missed.

“There’s nothing like the FX for me,” says Scutt, 32. “I love doublehanded sailing, working with somebody else, and the FX rewards being in sync in a way that I haven’t found in another boat. It’s fast and I like trapezing, but for me it’s about teamwork.”

Within days of teaming up, the pair headed to Palma for the first regatta of this year’s new Sailing Grand Slam Series. At the Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca (Spain), they had a terrific first regatta together, finishing eighth in a 46-strong fleet. “We’ve never had such a short lead-up, so we weren’t sure how it was going to go in Palma,” Henken says, “but it was all about getting racing experience with the competition.”

A few weeks later, the duo were in Hyeres, France. Rather than teams splitting into gold and silver fleets, this regatta was one fleet of 38 boats. Having never sailed an FX regatta with that many boats on the line, which the pair found competitive and challenging, Henken and Scutt secured second overall after 15 exhausting races.

“It was a marathon,” Henken says. “That was five days of three races per day with a medal race. We just kept solidifying what we knew how to do well in our control, and anything else we couldn’t control was about adapting. We could have won the regatta right at the end if I had called a better layline at the finish. Nonetheless, we surprised ourselves, and it’s exciting to know that we are competitive at the beginning of this journey.”

The competition is hard to pick right now, Scutt acknowledges. “It’s not lost on us that a lot of teams took a break after the Games, but we’re excited to already be beating teams who have just done the Games.”

Combined efforts over multiple campaigns places Henken and Scutt in an enviable position; both agree it is different doing a quad at age 30 versus 20. They have four years to work on this next quad, which is two more they’ve had in each of their previous campaigns. Not having to start over with a new crew is a big deal.

“With Helena, we are exponentially more steps forward than I would have been with anyone else because I know her and she knows the boat,” Henken says. “It takes so much time to be really good at this boat; the past 10 years of my life have catered toward Olympic sailing, and now I have all the tools and skill to make anything happen.”

Scutt agrees: “When I know what I want, I move pretty quickly, and this is why we jumped into a pretty competitive calendar right off the bat. I’m really excited that I bring a lot of skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise had if I had kept sailing the boat (after Rio), as far as technical aspects and being in faster boats than skiffs, and even the management experience is helpful.”

Together the Quad Squad

Scutt and Henken feel fortunate to be two of nine athletes selected to be part of the elite America 1 Racing Team for this next quad, with its emphasis on performance planning around elements such as scheduling, training, fitness and logistics.

“They know us very well as people and athletes,” Scutt says. “Our funding is not contingent upon our performance; they are not worried about results because they believe in our abilities, so we can focus on being professional athletes. Their help takes the weight of fundraising off our shoulders.”

Not forgetting that the Henken-Scutt union now includes a bronze medalist in the family, the pair are more motivated than ever to set their sights high for 2028. They’ve quickly adapted to the systems and processes that brought Hans Henken and teammate Ian Barrows their medals in Marseille. With a prior commitment for Palma, coach Willie McBride joined the pair very recently, so Henken coached his wife and sister for that regatta.

“It was really cool,” Scutt says with a broad smile. “Hans knows the boats inside and out, just as Paris knows the FX, so we benefitted from their combined knowledge. He really emphasizes the process and the mindset, and he’s coming at it from the athlete’s perspective, not necessarily that of a coach. He can also be super-honest with both of us; there is no beating around the bush.”

The Henken-Scutt duo are off to an enviable start; next up, the pair will race the 2025 European Championship in Thessaloniki, Greece, in June, followed by the fifth and final regatta of the Sailing Grand Slam Series, the Long Beach Olympic Classes Regatta, in July. The 49erFX World Championship in Cagliari, Italy, in October, will be one final check of the year’s progress.

“We’ve already had great success, and we can’t guarantee an end result,” Henken says, “but we can guarantee that we will try to do everything we can to be successful in 2028.”

The post Los Angeles 2028: Henken and Scutt’s Quest for Gold appeared first on Sailing World.

The Olympic Games is the most celebrated sporting event in the world. There are many other great events like World Cup soccer, the Super Bowl or the World Series that attract attention, but the Olympics is unlike any other. Athletes carry their nation’s pride on their shoulders, participating is important and winning a medal is particularly special. 

I’ve watched the world’s best sailors reach their zenith at the Games as my interest in Olympic sailing dates to my earliest memories. Since 1988 I’ve covered Olympic sailing for NBC seven times including this year’s regatta, which took place off Marseille, France. I wasn’t located in Marseille; I was hunkered down for weeks at NBC’s sprawling production facility in Stamford, Connecticut, alongside 2,000 others in Stamford producing content from the Games for American audiences.

NBC started “at home” production in 1996 for the Atlanta Olympic Games. Senior Vice President of Engineering, Tim Canary, who is based in Stamford (and keeps a cruising sailboat at a nearby marina) says, “With the advent of high-speed fiber optic links, remote production of major events is prolific and game changing in how sports are produced. Olympic sailing is no different.    

“NBC was provided with content from every Olympic venue from Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) in Paris. That facility was connected to NBC Sports’ Stamford headquarters via transatlantic fiber optic cabling providing 220 Gbps of data throughput. Once the signals are in Stamford, the Engineering and Operations team route the signal to soundproof rooms where talent provides commentary in English to the program.”

I’ve covered a lot of sailing for television, written for print and spoken in front of many audiences and each discipline has its challenges and rewards. Making sense out of the uber-competitive racing and the raw emotions that are inevitably attached some 4,000 miles away from the venue added to the complexity.

Consider these statistics: my role was to keep track of 330 sailors who were racing on 250 boats from 65 nations in 10 classes. Thirty medals were presented to 19 different countries, including one bronze medal to Americans Ian Barrows and Hans Henken in the men’s skiff 49er class.  I spent two weeks living in the French time zone, which meant being in my booth in Stamford at 0500 every morning.  Unfortunately, wind delays held the start of racing an average of two hours on 12 out of 13 days of scheduled racing.

“Consider these statistics: my role was to keep track of 330 sailors who were racing on 250 boats from 65 nations in 10 classes. Thirty medals were presented to 19 different countries, including one bronze medal to Americans Ian Barrows and Hans Henken in the men’s skiff 49er class.  I spent two weeks living in the French time zone, which meant being in my booth in Stamford at 0500 every morning.  Unfortunately, wind delays held the start of racing an average of two hours on 12 out of 13 days of scheduled racing.”

—Gary Jobson

Once the program got underway, however, I covered the races of one or two classes each day that extended for three to four hours. Being a solo commentator for many continuous hours is an exhausting mental exercise. The information I had to work with included the live world feed images that were provided by OBS.  When racing was delayed, OBS added a graphic that said, “Racing delayed due to weather.”

At times they added a time of day of a possible scheduled start.  I had information on a laptop that gave me the scores going into each race, the position and timings after each mark rounding and a link to a biography of each athlete. In preparation for the following day’s races, I partnered with two NBC researchers, Emily Schumacher and Nicholas Bruce, who worked 12-hour shifts, and were able to add information to my list of biographical information.

I also kept on hand a Racing Rules of Sailing booklet, the Sailing Instructions and technical information on each class. I wrote up an extended outline on racing tactics and speed enhancing techniques to help viewers understand the vagaries of racing sailboats. I explained how sailors read the wind, how they deal with overcoming adversity, the role of umpires, and the emotions involved while racing.  It is a tricky balance explaining sailing simultaneously to skilled racers and novices.

The OBS was able to include cameras on each racing boat and on the helmets of the kiteboard sailors and windsurfers. A special feature was being able to listen to the sailors that wore microphones.  We heard many languages and during starts and tight maneuvers viewers could hear the elevated voices. I tried to be quiet while sailors were talking or yelling. Often the only sound coming from the boats was the wind, waves and heavy breathing.

The production facility was fully engaged throughout the Games covering the 32 summer Olympic sports. The work list included coordinating all 28 announce booths, producing studio shows from control rooms, lots of busy people in edit suites producing features and interviews, research studios, internet reporting, coordinating satellite feeds, feeding everyone with a stocked cafeteria that was open 24 hours, employing janitorial services that kept everything spotless and providing an endless supply of snacks. I found the work force to be focused, friendly and enthused. People cared about their product.

The primary reason racing was postponed was the location of the racecourse close to land. OBS needed the course to be near land to be able to relay their many signals from the camera boats, drones, race boats and helicopters back to the broadcast center.  The wind was persistently stronger only 1-2 miles further off the Marseille Marina. Often the classes that raced further offshore were able to get their races completed. Future venues need to consider a suitable location where lack of wind does delay racing.            

NBC took great care to give the production team guidance. The fundamental premise what NBC termed the “five rings” of good storytelling:

1. Make them care.
2. Explain your sport.
3. Tell it like it is
4. Let the moment happen.
5. Emphasize Joy, Excitement, Emotion, and Stories

NBC executives held a series of three online seminars that asked announcers to be “clear and concise, make complex subjects understandable and to be welcoming.” One suggestion I took to heart was to “talk with your audience not to them.”  At the completion of the on-line seminars each participant was presented with a diploma. It was a nice touch.

The NBC compound operated with great efficiency that any military commander would appreciate.  Almost all workers were housed in local hotels. I stayed 4 miles away in a new hotel just one mile from the Riverside YC. I was able to race in three twilight races during my stay: On two of the days racing was abandoned due to lack of wind, and on the third day we had one good blow. Racing on a friend’s IC37 seemed a world away from the Olympic Games, and yet the sailing on those evenings related perfectly to the races I was watching in Marseille. 

At the end of each day, I would write up a report for the NBC Olympics website on the highlights of the day.  Luckily, I was able to communicate with people in Marseille and get some helpful insight on the dynamics around the sailing venue. A special moment at the conclusion of racing in each class was the formal medal ceremony. An International Olympic Committee member would present the medals, and a World Sailing board member would issue a diploma in a nifty box. The Paris 2024 music theme played while several hundred spectators watched from a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

The classes and the formats used for sailing in the Olympic Games seems curious to me. I believe the Games should reflect a sport as it is played around the world. For example, the height of a basketball net is exactly 10 feet for all players whether professional or amateur.  In Olympic sailing, five of the 10 classes featured foiling craft. The International Olympic Committee seems focused on presenting sports that are exciting for a younger audience. I’m not convinced foiling achieves that goal. 

If Olympic class selection was up to me, this would be my slate of ten sailing disciplines:

One would be Team Racing – three boats per country with mixed crews, a round-robin series followed by an elimination series. Another would be a doublehanded mixed crew long distance race of about 400 miles. Viewers could watch the races 24 hours per day using onboard GPS trackers. There should be men’s and women’s singlehanded classes, men’s and women’s skiff classes, a keelboat mixed crew class, a foiling multihulls class (mixed), a mixed doublehanded class, and continued experimentation with foiling (Formula) kiteboarding.

Olympic sailing is challenging for competitors and fascinating to watch, especially with the 3D graphics, on board cameras, microphones on sailors, aerial images, water level views, compelling personalities and intriguing storylines. When the racing is close, the lead changes are frequent, and competitors give it their best. We can appreciate the dedication required to excel at the top level of the sport. Showcasing sailing on television is great fun and while I was thrilled to be part of it once again, I’m happy to be out of the booth and back on the water.

The post Behind The Scenes of the High-Tech Olympic Sailing Broadcast appeared first on Sailing World.

The top-three teams in the standings had traded places in the top 10 on the world stage for three years. They had trained together and qualified the US for the Games this past summer in the Netherlands. And all three pairs had swallowed the bitter pill of missing country qualification in the 49er for the Tokyo Olympics. Now, having been nearly tied on points for a week, they had only one goal—to beat one another.

By this point in the regatta, Ian Barrows and Hans Henken, ­teammates since summer 2020, had virtually secured the berth. But on the sail out to the racecourse, they followed their usual routine of hoisting the spinnaker and testing how far they could put the pedal down while running downwind in a big breeze, a difficult point of sail in the for 49er no matter how talented the crew.

“We were 100 percent comfortable on starboard, no problem,” Henken recalls of their assessment that morning. “When we jibed to port, I had to flog the kite three times in a row. I told Ian, ‘Somebody is going to capsize today.’”

They knew right then that, tactically, port jibe would not be ideal to attack or try to outmaneuver another boat. It was a subtle observation, a slightly different shape of the murky blue-green chop heading in one direction. Their boathandling was flawless all week, and with a 2-2-3 score line on the last day, they won the 21-race trials by only 3 points.

Twenty-plus knots is the limit of 49er sailing. And they were right up against it on the final day of the US Olympic Team 49er selection ­trials on Miami’s Biscayne Bay, with eight teams and only a handful of races remaining to decide who would be racing next summer in Marseille, France, the Olympic venue.

“It’s expert-level; it’s strategic how hard to push,” says Charlie McKee, their regatta coach and a multiple Olympic medalist who, with his brother Jonathan, earned a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics, the year the 49er was introduced to the Games. “It’s not a fear of capsizing. The fact that Hans does the risk/reward that easily in his head, that says something about him. They can be analytical, but they also have so much confidence in each other. It’s not false like, ‘I got this.’ It’s from all the systematic training they have done with their squad coach, Mark Asquith.”

What transpired during that tedious series in Miami was the culmination of nearly a decade of dedication by three teams collectively aspiring to reach their peak abilities and one day make it to the Olympics. The photos on land after the final races in Miami revealed a depleted group of sailors, friends and competitors who represent the first true medal hopes for the US in the 49er since the early 2000s.

This squad, which shuffled partners after Tokyo, produced Barrows and Henken. And despite Henken’s near-career-ending injury months before the trials, the pair, winners of the 2023 Pan American Games, are now poised to achieve the seemingly impossible task of medaling at their first Olympic appearance. Citing a host of unique attributes and experiences, McKee and others say that they are ready.

Selecting sailors for the games varies by country. The United States once favored domestic selection trials, pitting sailors against each other to produce the best representative. This approach resulted in one of the most successful Olympic sailing programs of all time, but as domestic Olympic fleets shrank, the value of international competition grew. By the 2000s, to win a medal at the Games, it wasn’t good enough to be the best in the US anymore. The proving grounds were overseas. With only a handful of US medals won over the past few quads, however, a domestic trials format was reinstated for five classes.

The 2023 49er World Championship in the Netherlands saw Barrows and Henken and teammates Andrew Mollerus and Ian MacDiarmid finish in the top 10 (ninth and fifth respectively), which earned the US a 49er berth. All that remained was a one-regatta showdown between these two teams, and other favorites, Nevin Snow and Mac Agnese, to fill that berth.

This battle was a long time coming, particularly for Henken, who had raced in the domestic trials in the 49er class in 2007, and Barrows, who watched his brother Thomas win selection for the Rio Games. “Hans was a kid, got a boat, and sailed in his first trials,” McKee says. “It’s no coincidence that he got Olympic fever.”

Failing to qualify the US for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was a massive blow to the American 49er program—and to the sailors themselves—but after a few crew switches, much of the squad was back to training within a few months.

“I made it clear to Ian a year before the 2021 World Championship [in Oman] that I wanted to be a contender in that fleet,” Henken says. If the pair had a mediocre finish, he would have called it quits. “This was a turning point, and we came away finishing fourth. This was the green light to say, ‘We have what it takes.’”

Barrows, from the US Virgin Islands, is predictably laid-back, a counterpoint to Henken’s fastidiousness. Henken is an engineer who would be designing rocket engines if he hadn’t committed to Olympic campaigning. He lives by the numbers. “We’ve logged every day together in an Excel spreadsheet,” he says. Since June 2020, they’ve sailed 1,300 days together.

“We’re still a young team,” Henken says. “A podium finish in Palma 2022 gave us confidence that we are players.” Finishing top 10 in two of the last three world championships, he adds, boosted their confidence going into the trials. “We knew that we were capable of winning; also, we beat the other two US teams at the last three small events.”

A defining moment of their campaign leading up to the trials was neither the epiphany at the Oman worlds nor their podium finishes. It was the frightening moment when Henken was injured in the cockpit of a foiling SailGP F50 in Taranto, Italy, this past September. What could have easily ended his career and his Olympic destiny turned out to be a test that Henken and Barrows saw as an opportunity to grow as a team.

Henken says that he was unconscious for five minutes and severely concussed, his sternum was broken in half, and four ribs were broken. The prospect of competing in the Pan American Games in October, which is perfect preparation for the Olympics, as well as the January trials were off the table.

“When I woke up in the hospital, I wasn’t sure I could walk,” Henken says. A patient recovery followed. “That’s kind of who I am. Any big goal, I plan to make step-wise goals. As unfortunate as it was. It fell into my wheelhouse. I told myself, It’s going to happen.”

Henken drew on his own determination and the experience of his wife, Helena Scutt, who recovered from a traumatic accident to compete in the 2016 Rio Games in the 49erFX, alongside Henken’s sister, Paris.

“Healing from my accident was a long process mentally in terms of PTSD,” Scutt says. “Just because someone looks fine, they can be a long way from feeling fine. It’s important for teammates, coaches and friends to recognize. I’ll be looking out for Hans.”

For 49er crews, there’s a constant balancing act between training on the water and time in the gym, and when the decision was made to try to sail the Pan Am games, Barrows and Henken knew that their training efforts would be quite compromised.

“Hans likes to have everything perfectly in place. The boat, his body. The good part of this situation was that it took Hans out of his comfort zone,” McKee says. “But if there’s ever a partner to have who wouldn’t be phased, it’s Ian. Hans knew that Ian was fine with everything. It’s a hugely positive character trait. That’s not going to knock him off his game. He can perform well in ­less-than-ideal circumstances.”

“Honestly, Hans is a pretty freak athlete,” Barrows says. He had to steer more gingerly through maneuvers during the Pan Am games to allow Hans to find his footwork. They estimate that Henken was at 60 percent ability at the Pan Am games and 80 percent by the trials. “At the Games, he was a little beat up, but at the trials, I didn’t notice anything.”

“We’re both incredibly hard workers,” Henken adds. “We’re always uncovering that ‘next thing.’ And when things don’t go our way, we say, ‘OK, this is part of the plan,’ and we start working for the next solution.”

“We were next to the boat that we had to beat the entire time,” Barrows says about his trials experience. “The adrenaline was always pumping.” They had the confidence of their Pan Am win and Henken’s remarkable recovery to push them through the marathon regatta. “We had no dip in focus,” Henken says. “The whole event, we stayed positive.”

During training blocks, Asquith would run the 49er squad around a weather mark “tip to tail,” with each team taking their turn at the back of the lineup. They’d race a course, dozens of times, keeping track of scores. The average placing for the winner was always a 2. “Because of this, at the trials, we used this idea that when you’re behind, don’t panic,” Henken says. “Not having that panic, ever, and this idea that this was going to work played a big role in our win.”

McKee says that the reason they never lost faith is because “they knew the trials was going to be that way. They fully expected it, and were mentally prepared for it.”

Going into the last day of the trials, Barrows and Henken had a slight lead, with three races remaining. “They knew the scenario where they could clinch the regatta in the second race of the day, if things went their way,” McKee says. 

The pair knew that the right side of the racecourse was favored; they were in third place as they sailed up the second beat and needed a second to secure the regatta win with one race to spare. With the second place doing a bear-away set, Barrows and Henken  did a perfect jibe set. They nailed the layline for the finish, got the second they needed, and their ticket was in hand.

“They had been sailing contained and controlled,” McKee says. “But because the analytics justified the maneuver, and they matched Ian’s tactical instincts and Hans trusted him, it worked. It never entered their minds that they could flip in a jibe set.”

True to the lessons learned from Asquith’s repetitive drill, the ­winning team had a pile of second-place finishes in their score line: 10 of 21 races, to be precise. “It was such a marathon of a regatta,” Barrows says. “On the way in, Hans started to do his normal boat check. And I said: ‘What are you doing? We’re done!’”

The final score had Barrows and Henken 3 points ahead of Mollerus and MacDiarmid, with Snow and Agnes a mere point behind. The differences were tiny over the course of such a grueling series. “They are very good at boathandling,” McKee says. “Ian has these skills where he knows what the boat can do. There were no boathandling mistakes. It’s amazing, after 21 races, 84 legs.”

Because this will be the first Olympic appearance for Barrows and Henken, the statistics for medal success are not in their favor, but the Games are famous for producing miracles. “When you go to your first Olympics, even if you’re good, you don’t usually do well,” McKee says. “The second time is usually when you win a medal.”

However, he sees something different in Barrows and Henken. “Some people cope [with the Olympic experience] by saying, ‘It’s just another regatta.’ We as coaches don’t think that’s realistic,” he says. “There’s no way to pretend. Ian and Hans are in a position to face that. They’re not going to be mentally taken out by that. That’s just not who they are.”

The pair are fortunate to have two significant experiences simulating the Olympic experience: They sailed in the 2022 Olympic Test Event in Marseille and won the Pan Am games in Chile, which certainly count for something. “I knew that [Pan Am games] experience was going to pay dividends,” Barrows says about the regatta. “We took a lot of notes about what we can control and what we can’t.”

As they now settle into a new rhythm in sync with the Olympic countdown, Barrows says that understanding each other’s needs is most important, as is recognizing when to relax and knowing when they’ve done enough. The trials are over. The berth is theirs. They earned it. And while it was mentally and physically draining, they are now brimming with determination.

The post Skiff Brothers To the Games appeared first on Sailing World.

After a week of blustery cold-front tails whipping through Miami, this final morning is back to normal. The basin is glassy and the sun is balmy again. As my skipper, Stu McNay, and I rig our International 470, a nearby cruise ship’s PA system breaks the boat-park silence. Welcome passengers…enjoy your day at sea. I think to myself how different their day will be than that of Stu and me. The cruisers are salivating for their buffets, but we’re hungry for an Olympic berth.

Once we complete our team warmup onshore, we are the first pair to launch from the beach, primed to execute. Over the previous six days of racing, we’ve enjoyed the sightseeing tour of our 30-minute tow to the racecourse, past multimillion-dollar mansions and through Government Cut. We use this time to acclimate to the day’s conditions. Right away, we see that the wind is increasing and beautiful waves are cresting over the shallows off South Beach. When I see this, I sense that it’s going to be a good day.

Our priority is to stay in the moment and allow our technique to shine. We’ve put in the work, and it’s payday. The anticipated ­scenario is a must-go-right racetrack off the starting line, so today is about being a precision team. We also know that we have to practice our final approach to the starting line because the committee boat is a long motoryacht with the start flag positioned at the bow. The race-committee yacht also swings wildly, which makes boat-end starts even more dangerous. So we agree to a modified approach. We will approach the boat at 20 seconds. Any sooner, and it will be difficult to tack up to the boat and defend the inside position.

We execute the start as planned, but at 30 seconds, there is a pile of boats with the same idea, and there’s nowhere to go. We wait confidently, pull the trigger at 20 seconds, and are the first boat to tack out from the melee.

As we reach the top mark, we have a small lead. In races like this, all of my senses are firing, and I tune in to friends on our support boat cheering for us. It’s the motivation we need to finish off this qualification regatta once and for all. There isn’t a moment of silence in our boat for the next 35 minutes of racing. We treat every wave as important as the next while keeping each other in check. Our tacks are excellent, and before each maneuver I think to myself, Make this one the best one yet. It’s working. We extend downwind, port jibe is fast and fun on the waves. Starboard requires accuracy and discipline to surf. This final race is a thing of beauty. We are worthy of the berth.

Allow me to rewind this story to a moment now long ago. I’ve finished the last race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and immediately after we cross the line, out of medal contention, I know that I need another campaign. I have unfinished business, which is not a good feeling. My skipper, Nikki Barnes, and I have had a beautiful campaign together, but because the Olympic committee changed the International 470 to a mixed discipline, we can no longer sail as a team. I need a new partner.

Back home in Minnesota, I ask ­anyone and everyone in my circles to skipper for me. My body type is one that can work into several Olympic classes, but the most important aspect is my teammate. I commit to a yearlong campaign in the foiling Nacra 17, the Olympic catamaran class, and during this time, Stu, a four-time Olympian, calls me to say, “Hey, Lara, I am 99 percent sure I’m going to retire, but if things don’t work out in the Nacra, keep me in the back of your mind.”

But I feel that I need to grow in other ways and leave the 470 on the back burner. I’m happy being back in the beginner’s ­mindset and loving anything to do with foiling. I also have my eye on the Women’s America’s Cup team that’s forming. A path forward is coming into focus, but after the 2022 Nacra 17 Worlds, my teammate joins the New York YC’s American Magic team full time. Once again, I’m in the same space I was in after Tokyo—searching for a teammate and a campaign to light my fire. My best friend suggests that I give Stu a call and reopen the conversation. It’s a short and exciting phone call, and we both show strong interest. Over the next month, I sit by my phone waiting.

The phone rings. Stu’s in. It’s a go.

I remember two things about our first sail together: He is ­incredibly stubborn about not letting the main ease when I have more leverage to give, and he can tune our boat in five minutes. My mind is blown, and I am so excited to tap his wealth of experience.

We win our first two domestic regattas and earn the right to represent the US at the Olympic Test Event in Marseille in summer 2023. We then finish eighth at the Princess Sofia Regatta, our first international measure. The campaign is off to a great start, but when we arrive at the European Championship and are met with giant ocean swells and a big breeze, we quickly discover our weakness.

Beyond learning a new way of sailing the boat (our bodies and techniques are very different from each of our previous partners), we will need to order and test entirely new equipment from what either of us has used before. Discovering weaknesses is always a fun challenge; it’s part of the life we lead. This part I can handle, but what’s dragging me down is our fundraising—or lack thereof. It’s an area in which I usually excel, but I’m now sinking into the deepest debt I’ve ever had. Donations are hard to come by. Then, right before our first world championship, I receive the most powerful blow to my world: My dad has lymphoma, and together my parents are about to fight this awful disease. I approach this news the way I do any major obstacle in our training. I dive into the research to learn what I can. I keep a positive mindset. My parents are my biggest heroes, and thinking of Dad and what he is about to attack doesn’t allow for me to have a single complaint on or off the water.

I have to avoid the family for the holidays to keep foreign germs to myself and focus on the task at hand. This is gutting because I want nothing but to hug my parents, to sit with Dad, and physically be there to support him. In these moments of hurt, however, we grow and become the greatest versions of ourselves.

It is mid-October 2023 when I start to mentally prepare for the trials, set aside the variables I can’t control, and focus on being my best athlete. If we are going to win, it will take all I have. I accept my debt, so it isn’t a nagging worry. I immerse myself in books and documentaries about athletes conquering their dreams and work closely with my mental coach. I also add boxing to my routine, and I love the quickness it gives me, the explosive power, and memorizing steps.

Stu and I then make the most important decision of our ­campaign: to relocate to the Canary Islands to train with the ­international fleet. To achieve anything great, we will have to ­struggle together, and the regular racing season doesn’t allow for much growth in this way. What really makes this happen is being in an environment where our competitors hold us to our highest standards every day. The days are long, there are no regatta distractions, and we say whatever is on our mind. This is what will give us solid ground to stand on in the heat of battle and a shared ownership of our accomplishments.

During our first training block in Lanzarote, things on the boat are becoming familiar as a team. Stu and I are creating our language on board. We have now experienced a variety of sea states and dialed in a few specific terms that connect us to certain techniques. This is where the fun happens because our days are spent seeking small performance gains. Our Lanzarote training gives us the gift of preparation and chemistry. Stu is humble, he always wants to learn and grow, and he’s a supportive teammate. There is nothing more I can ask for. He has such a natural feel for a perfectly balanced 470, and his range of controls is very narrow, quick and accurate. He is a legend for good reason. 

It’s the eve of our final day of racing at the ­trials in Miami. Our team gathers for dinner, and Coach Robby Bisi ­delivers an inspiring speech. The kind of speech that puts a team on track for winning the next race. And that we do, with confidence. After we cross the finish line, my mind is still racing. It’s impossible to grasp the magnitude of what has happened. The mix of emotion and exhaustion is such a wild experience. There is a sense of accomplishment with the race that we’ve sailed and won, but it brings uncertainty because nothing in our sport is final until the protest time limit is over. I recognize that this is not just our win; it’s a milestone to share with our friends and family who take this emotional ride with us and our competitors and squad mates who put their hearts on the line alongside us.

On our tow back to Miami YC, I ask Stu to share his high and low of the day. “My high was taking the main down,” he says. He’s kidding, of course, but it’s true. This regatta has taken its toll on all of us. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, mentally and physically. It’s been a long road to get here, from watching peers compete at the 2012 and 2016 Games and wanting so badly for the chance to be in their shoes to being told that I will never have the looks or ­talent to make it in the sailing world—but this gal is now 2-for-2 on the trials card.

The post From Trials to Games appeared first on Sailing World.

The sun streaks across Miami’s tropical blue waters as Erika Reineke sails up to her coach, Erik Bowers, to come up with a game plan for the final race. Heading into today, three women had a chance to go to Paris for the ILCA 6 class, including Charlotte Rose, Christina Sakellaris, and Reineke. With Rose copping a U Flag in the second to last race, the duo turns their sights to Sakellaris, who can still knock Reineke out of the running.

“If she wins and you get fourth, it’s over,” says Bowers, who has been keeping an eye on the scoresheet. “You still have a drop, so it’s probably time we use it.” ]

With a puffy northwest breeze, it will be tricky to herd the fleet with the leverage available in each passing shift, so Reineke and Bowers decide on a more direct approach. If Reineke can keep her opponent out of the top five, the berth will be hers, so after some final words of encouragement from her coach, she takes a deep breath, pushes off from the RIB, and readies herself for the race.

A Fort Lauderdale native, Reineke grew up around Laser sailing legends like Brad Funk and Anna Tunnicliffe, which had her dreaming of the Olympics since she was 15 years old. After a stellar youth and college career that included 2012 Olympic selection regattas as a high schooler, a four-year winning streak at the ICSA Women’s Singlehanded Championships, and two additional campaigns for Rio and Tokyo, an Olympic berth seems long overdue. After failing to qualify in 2016 and 2020, Reineke transitioned to the 49erFX, spending two years with Lucy Wilmot before deciding to step back into the ILCA 6 to make a solo run at 2024. She met Bowers while they were campaigning for the Rio Olympics, both finishing second in their respective classes, but only began working as athlete and coach in 2022 out of Reineke’s home Lauderdale YC. Since then, the two have been nearly inseparable with this single goal in mind. “Erik has been an integral part of this effort,” says Reineke. “He’s super dedicated and we’ve both been dreaming of making it to the Olympics as a team. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and his insight has been invaluable since day one.”

After a strong start to her campaign, Reineke suffered a devastating ankle fracture with the US SailGP team leading up to their event on Sydney Harbor in February 2023. The injury took eight-and-a-half months to fully heal, and she knew the timeline for full recovery was going to be tight. Her first event back was the 2023 Olympic Test Event in Marseille last July, where she nabbed a 10th-place finish. She then scored 15th at the Worlds a few weeks later, with her American teammate, Charlotte Rose, finishing fifth. Going into the Olympic Trials, Reineke knew that Rose would be her toughest competitor, which proved true as Rose lead most of the event. Hiking conditions persisted through all seven days of racing, and at one point a squall came through with some of the windiest conditions Reineke has ever raced in.

“Every day we had to wake up and battle,” Reineke says. “The points were always close so I had to keep the mentality that it was never over. We took each race at face value, recalibrated, and went from there. Going into the final race, it was pretty clear what I had to do. It was just a matter of execution.”

Within a minute of the start, Reineke stalks Sakellaris near the pin end of the line, controlling her opponent with a late hook. Sakellaris tacks out to find a late hole, but Reineke follows, and eventually both boats start in the second row. When Sakellaris tacks again to try and find clean breeze, Reineke follows in a controlling position, forcing both boats towards the right side of the course. A furious tacking duel ensues, with Reineke positioning herself to windward each time, never letting her opponent get to leeward and ahead.

After rounding the mark in eighth Reineke’s trademark downwind speed catapults her into second place through the gates, and for a moment, she thinks about how glorious it would be to finish with a bullet. “There’s always a part of you that wants to win the race,” says Reineke, “but with the conditions we had, it was more important to stay between her and the next mark versus trying to do something crazy for the race win.”

The discipline pays off by the time the two boats finish in 14th and 17th, and after securing her dream berth to the Olympics, the first person Reineke sees is coach Bowers. “We’ve been through so much together over the last two years and it was awesome to jump on his RIB and take that moment in together. He’s worked the hardest on my team of anyone, so that was really special.”

By the time she reaches shore, Reineke is greeted by her parents and sister, who choke back tears as they lift the boat onto the dolly. Yet even amidst the celebrations, Reineke knows the job isn’t done, and in many ways, this is just the start to the grueling months ahead. She won’t even have much time to celebrate, as she’s scheduled to fly to Barcelona the next day for some simulator training with American Magic.

With the summer games starting up in August, Reineke and Bowers will depart to Palma this week to check in with the international fleet. It’s been nine months since Reineke saw true international competition at the Worlds last year, so they’ll use this time to see which areas she still needs improvement before heading to Marseilles later this summer. “It was great to finally get the berth,” says Reineke, “but I knew very quickly once we got back to shore that it was going to be a quick turnaround and I’d have to get my ass moving again.”

It appears to be business as usual for Reineke, and at least for now, business is good. As for her chances at a medal, Reinke isn’t underestimating the amount of work it will take to have a shot at the podium. “I think it’s going to be really hard,” she says, “but we have a plan in place and if I’ve learned anything so far, it’s that you have to have faith in the plan. The podium is pretty shaken up right now and there’s no clear favorites, so if we do the things we need to do and stick to the plan, I see one-hundred-percent medal potential.”

The post Reineke’s Battle For the Berth appeared first on Sailing World.

Sarah Newberry Moore’s son, Iren, just turned 2. Not only is he already wreaking havoc at the New York YC—scattering Goldfish crackers across the manicured lawn at Harbour Court and spilling his grandmother’s wine in the prestigious club library—but he’s also beginning to know his way around a Nacra 17 better than most adults.

Iren was, for all intents and purposes, born into the current Olympic quad, so it’s not surprising that he is quickly learning the ins and outs of elite sailboat racing, just as his mom and her sailing partner, David Liebenberg, have had to adapt to having a baby in the campaign mix. It’s an arrangement that is working out just fine.

“If you ask Iren what momma does, it’s ‘sailboat with Uncle Dave,’” Newberry Moore says with a smile. “Any time he sees a man with brown hair, he says, ‘Uncle Dave,’ and any man on a sailboat is Uncle Dave. Luckily, his dad looks very different. Dave has been showing him how to do boatwork, and he loves touching all of the parts of the boat and pulling on the lines.”

Raising a small child and training as an Olympic hopeful have several things in common: Each is an exhausting and challenging mission. Few US Sailing Team athletes vying for an Olympic spot in the current quad shoulder the additional responsibility of child-rearing: Stu McNay (Mixed 470) is a father of two (5 and 8), and Nikki Barnes (470) recently had her first baby. For Newberry Moore, the pandemic provided her with the time to determine that having a child was what she wanted in addition to continuing to race at the highest level of catamaran racing.

“The day I decided I wanted to have a child, we were in lockdown, the circuit was shut down, Dave and I weren’t sailing, although we had already planned to do another campaign,” she says. “There was no training or racing happening, and I realized if I didn’t do it then, I didn’t know when I would be able to. Dave was the first person I called. I said to him, ‘I think I want to have a baby,’ and he replied, ‘Ah, let’s talk about this later. I’ll call you back.’”

Newberry Moore acknowledges that from the beginning, Liebenberg found a way to support that process and believed in her ability to do all of the things related to motherhood and Olympic campaigning.

“It wasn’t a big surprise when she told me,” Liebenberg says. “I understood that it would help her develop as a person and an athlete. We’ve adjusted as a team with scheduling and so on; it really hasn’t been that big of a jump from my perspective, but more so for Sarah.”

Austrian Olympian Tom Zajak (bronze medalist in the Nacra 17 in Rio 2016) has known Newberry Moore since she won the Nacra 17 event at the Sailing World Cup Miami in 2013. He’s been coaching the pair since last summer and, as a dad himself who parented through an Olympic campaign, he understands the challenge.

“Sarah manages it really well,” Zajak says. “She needed time to find a good rhythm, and she has built up a good structure for her that is working really well; she is a role model for many sailors and athletes in many sports who are planning a family. What also works well for Sarah and Dave is that they have been sailing together for a long time; I think the glue that keeps them together is that they are quite different personalities, which is very important because the Nacra 17 is very demanding, and if you bring different skills to it, you have a bigger range of performance skills and approaches. It’s most important that they have a goal together to compete at the Olympics, and this is probably the biggest bonding they have—that makes them a strong team.”

Newberry Moore says she’s never been as good at what she does as she is now. It’s paramount to ensure that her valuable time is honored, both at home and in the boat park.

“I have become a far more focused person, and the time that has been eliminated is that time when you indulge yourself, whether it’s doubt or celebrating yourself,” she says. “My focus is either being a mom or being efficient with my time in the campaign. It’s also built my confidence as an athlete, as Dave can attest. This journey as a teammate and as an athlete inspired a deep level of self-confidence that I didn’t have before, where I started to advocate for what I needed and whatever the baby needed or wanted.”

Getting back on the boat after Iren’s birth was as much about getting her body back in shape for the intense workout the Nacra 17 demands as it was about the mental conditioning. “I may have looked whole, but coming in off the trapeze wire was an accomplishment,” Newberry Moore says. “I was the only one who knew what my core strength was, and the big goal each day was how smoothly I could get off the wire. My own internal journey was experiencing, ‘Cool! Good entry! You didn’t fall off the boat!’ It was so different to Dave’s reality.”

It didn’t help that the pair is campaigning the most difficult boat in the Olympic fleet. The Nacra 17 has been the equipment for the mixed multihull event since Rio 2016, the first time there was a mixed discipline. After Rio, the boat became a foiling catamaran. By 2020, the boats were foiling downwind, and for the 2024 quad, the boats are foiling upwind and downwind.

As the only US team actively campaigning a Nacra 17 currently, it has been virtually impossible for Newberry Moore and Liebenberg to train domestically and ride out the learning curve brought on by changes to the boat. The pair has had to train in Europe mostly, which has impacted routines related to traveling with a baby and training in a full-time program of some 200 days with early starts and late finishes.

“The boat is now much more challenging to sail,” Liebenberg says. “Downwind we would be pushing with intensity, but upwind we could take a breath and look around a lot easier. But now, in a lot of ways, it’s more difficult to sail upwind than downwind. We need to be much more fit; all of the alignment on the systems—the rudders and the rigging—matters a lot more. It’s been really exciting, a lot of fun, and a learning curve for the entire fleet, but it’s more boatwork and more time in the gym.”

Newberry Moore adds: “I think we were quick to adapt to upwind foiling. We had moments when we were going the same speed as top athletes—everybody was learning very quickly. It was like climbing a mountain that was growing. We’d figure something out, then see that someone else was doing it much better than we were. It was constant adaptation and required being very open-minded. You have to really like the process, often not having an answer and always being open to change. If you can enjoy that, then it’s a great boat to be ­sailing.”

The post The Multihull Mama appeared first on Sailing World.

“I was relieved to have officially qualified for the Olympics,” writes Formula Kiteboard champion Daniela Moroz on her excellent and brutally honest blog post. “It’s something I’ve dreamed of my whole life, and it’s crazy to think it’s officially happening – I’m going to be an Olympian. Insane.”

But now comes the hard part. The final push to Marseilles. “There is a lot of work to be done in the next year leading up to the Games,” she writes. “For me, the most important thing will be to keep my head in the right place… there is no off season, no official time where you can recover and disconnect from the job. We think we have to keep training all year, which is completely unsustainable and leads to burnout…

“One of my biggest areas of improvement is gaining weight, so I will be working closely with our awesome team of US Sailing Team trainers based just outside of Miami. I truly believe that following this path will still put out net gains for my Olympic sailing because it will re-spark my fire for the sport. My mission is still clear: the goal is gold, and I’m ready to do everything I can to deliver a winning performance at the 2024 Olympic Games.”

Moroz knows next summer’s Olympic Regatta is not only her first shot at the sport’s first medal, but it could very well be her one and only shot given the emotional and physical drain this campaign has put her through over the past several years at the top of the fleet. There is an underlining urgency in her blog and an honest plea for financial support, which does not come readily from US Olympic coffers. I encourage you to read her latest writing in which she shares the tumultuous experience of her Olympic qualification. She is a legitimate best-medal hopeful for the US Sailing Team, an inspirational sailor that deserves our recognition and support, so let’s all chip in what we can to help her soar to the podium (a GoFundMe pages is now live as well). It’s what she was born to do. The following conversation was recorded at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in Chicago in June ahead of her qualification and published in the Fall 2023 edition of Sailing World Magazine.

—Dave Reed

Born to Soar

There’s a reason why Daniela Moroz, the six-time kiteboard world champion and four-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, is always quick to flash a radiant smile. Happiness comes easy for the 22-year-old foiling phenom from San Francisco, which most certainly has something to do with her parents, her upbringing on, in and now above the water, and the fact that she actually enjoys her training as she pushes ever closer to the Formula Kite’s Olympic debut. “I love pushing myself, and I love seeing how far I can go and how well I can perform,” she says. At the moment, she is performing as expected: fast and faster. In Marseille, France, on the very waters of next year’s Olympic regatta, she won a bronze medal in July and locked in her US Sailing Team spot. All that remains is to qualify the US, and from there it’s straight to the big stage.

Most sailors have likely never watched a kiteboard race. How does it go?

It is course racing, just like what everyone else does in sailing. It’s windward-leeward courses, and it’s a three-minute start sequence. Instead of having an hour- or half-hour-long race, our races are only about 12 to 15 minutes in qualifying [races]. And then eight to 10 minutes in the medal races. It’s really fast. I learned recently that it’s actually the fastest Summer Olympic sport, which is pretty cool. Upwind we’re going 20 to 25 knots, and downwind we’re pushing into the high 30s pretty comfortably. If you want to go fast, it’s a great class to get into. The equipment is unique, and it’s very dynamic and exciting. I always loved going fast, so that was a big thing that pulled me into it.

Describe a typical starting approach; it must be madness with all the kites hovering overhead in one ­confined area.

It’s similar to regular sailing in that you still have your starting routine—do a few line checks, get a transit, check what side of the course has more wind. Then you’re fighting for position on the line and trying not to come off the foil that whole time. There are kites everywhere and RIBs—there’s a lot going on. Once you start, it’s amazing. I always feel like those first 30 seconds are always so interesting because, while holding a lane, there’s this moment of silence where I get into the flow, and I’m going 20 to 25 knots upwind, and I’m trying to see where I can tack out. Everything is happening at such a fast pace.

What’s the key to being able to hold that lane?

Hiking, which sounds weird for kiting, but that’s what I’m doing. I can be holding up to 120 kilos of load on the board, which transfers into my legs. So, it’s kind of like holding a squat or a wall sit for several minutes upwind. And I just heel over as much as possible. I’m managing all of the power of the kite and kind of putting it into the harness and feeling every little movement to try to point higher and go faster. I’m trying to get the vector from the kite to the board to be as close to 180 degrees as possible.

From there, what are the ­tactical fundamentals you have to play out while also managing the kite, the foil, and the rest of the fleet?

Speed helps. As always, it’s nice to have a speed edge. When I’m sending into the left corner off the start, I’m always trying to see what my options are. There’s a lot to manage, and I have to get into the flow right away and be conscious of what I’m thinking about and make sure I’m thinking about the right things. In kiting, there’s so much feel that goes into it. The longer you’ve been kiting, the better your field is and the better your reaction times will be to anything that happens with the kite and the foil. The kite and board have to be an extension of your body because you have to be so in sync with it to be able to go fast.

When you started competing in international events and won your first Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year (in 2016 at the age of 15, the youngest winner ever), the field was tiny—no more than a dozen female competitors. But now the numbers and the competitive field are enormous. It’s amazing to think you’ve been at the tip of this spear for so long.

Yeah, it’s really interesting because there’s all these established Olympic sailing classes that have been around ­forever, so when it comes to the Olympics, there’s kind of a formula. With kiteboarding, we don’t know what the pathway is, and we have to figure it out.

You’ve said recently that your technique is sound, but your next hurdles are the ­equipment and your weight.

I’ve been kiting for pretty much half of my life now, so my technique is pretty good, my feel is really good, and my boathandling is good. But now it’s a matter of figuring out how to make the most gains and improvements with the equipment. For each regatta, we can have four kites that are different sizes—usually 9, 11, 15 and 21 square meters. We can register only one foil for the whole regatta. I’ve never really been a technical person, and I always blame myself before blaming any of my gear, but now I really have to be more technical and have confidence in my skills and my technique. I know what a fast kite should feel like, and I know how a good foil should feel.

What does a fast kite feel like?

It’s impossible to describe. It just feels good, and it just takes you where you want to go.

What about the weight—is it more advantageous to be heavy or light?

As with almost any foiling discipline, weight is important. In kiting, weight is righting moment, so I’m trying to get as heavy as possible. But it’s hard because I want to feel good and I want to feel strong, fit, agile and athletic, but then I also need to be heavy to just be able to go with that. It’s been an interesting mental challenge because I want to have confidence in my body and what I’m able to do, but it’s not always super easy to do that when you know what our sport demands. It’s an interesting balance, but my goal is to be competing for a medal at the Games, and I’m going to do everything I can that’s in my power to do that.

You’ve been transparent about your burnout a few years ago. What happened?

At the end of the 2019 racing season, I was just starting college and able to take some time off and focus on that. But when I got back on the water and back into kite racing, I didn’t feel that fire in me anymore. It was weird because for so many years all I wanted to do was go kite and go shred and have fun on the water. Suddenly, that desire wasn’t there anymore. That’s not normal. That’s not who I am. When COVID happened and all of the 2020 racing season was canceled, I took six months off, and I remember being at a certain point where I didn’t even want to look at my race gear—I didn’t even let myself keep it in the car so I didn’t even have to think about it. It was probably the best thing I could have done for myself at this point because it had taken this weird toll on me where I didn’t want to do it anymore. The thought of going kiting was so unappealing, which was a really weird feeling to have.

What got you back on track?

I eventually realized kiting is all I’ve really been doing with my life for six years and I needed to have something besides kiting. Because as much as we love sailing and we love foiling, it is not everything in life. You also need to be happy in order to perform, you need to be enjoying what you’re doing, and you need to be connected with your sport and with nature and with what you’re doing. So, I got a Moth.

The vagabond pro-kiter lifestyle must be pretty attractive. You get to play and live in some amazing waters and venues.

Last year, I spent maybe 40 days at home. I’m on the road most of the year. There are downsides to that, but I always remember that I really, really love what I’m doing. And when it comes down to it, I love going out and training actually, and I love pushing myself, and I love seeing how far I can go and how well I can perform. So, I always remind myself that I’m super lucky to get to do this and to even do something I love so much. We get to experience the world in such a unique way that few people get to experience.

Speaking of experiences, what is your top speed to date?

It was around 38 knots—a burst in a bear away, but not before a wipeout.

The post US Olympic Sailing’s Daniela Moroz Is On the Verge appeared first on Sailing World.

A long ten days of competition at the Allianz Sailing World Championships came to a close in The Hague, The Netherlands, with the ILCA 6 Medal Race, where US Sailing Team’s Charlotte Rose secured fifth overall, a personal career best in the Olympic class ILCA 6.

Rose had nothing to lose going into the Medal Race. Entering in fifth overall, she’d managed to put enough points between her and sixth place Emma Plasschaert of Belgium, so the only way she could go was up the leaderboard. With all points in play above her, Rose sailed an aggressive final race in very light conditions on the North Sea. She rounded the leeward gate in fifth and ultimately dropped back to ninth to close out the race, but stood by her decisions to try mostly anything and give it her all.

“My main goal was to make the medal race, so to finish fifth means the world to me. This is a new personal best,” said Rose, the two-time Youth Worlds Gold Medalist in the ILCA 6 now making her way up the Olympic class circuit. “It feels really great to qualify the United States for the Olympic Games and to represent the US on the world stage here. The best part of Worlds was being able to close my season on a good note and handle all the conditions I faced this week. It was stressful for sure. I’m happy to have some time off now to reset for the 2024 Worlds in January and the Olympic Trials in Miami.”

In addition to the ILCA 6 berth, the US Sailing Team USA qualified for Paris 2024 in the 49er with top finishes by Andrew Mollerus and Ian MacDiarmid and Ian Barrows, as well as Ian Barrows and Hans Henken. Steph Roble & Maggie Shea locked in the team’s 49erFX berth and Daniela Moroz finished fifth in the Women’s Formula Kite to earn her ticket to Marseilles.

The next opportunity to qualify the United States in the remaining classes is the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile October 28 – November 5.

The post US Sailors Secure Four Team Berths for Olympic Regatta appeared first on Sailing World.