Guest Ed

As we love to do, we present another guest editorial, this one from Mr. X. A tip o’ the hat to The Simpsons must be mentioned! Enjoy.

One Year Dreams and Five Ring Fever

By: Mr. X

The Pre-Olympics have come and gone marking one year until the start of the Olympic games in Athens Greece. For American Olympic hopefuls and their fans it was another proof positive that the Untited States will slip further from its’ once proud standing as the Worlds best sailing country at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

The American position at the top of the Olympic classes was clearly marked by our performances in 1964, 1984 and 1992. This all came crashing down when, on our home waters, in 1996 the US had its worst Olympic sailing performance since the end of World War II. A slight rally in 2000 didn’t bring the US close to the accomplishments of previous teams. The sadder part still was that the 2000 rally was mostly achieved on the backs of older talent. Of the individual US Medallists in 2000 over 60% had medalled on one of the US teams between ’84 and ’92.

Figure shows the percent of possible sailing medals won by the USA (data source)

Why has there been such a decline in the performance of US teams? There are as many answers as people to ask. The most common answer is a lack of funding and there is a lot of truth to this argument. I think it goes deeper than just a lack of money. There seems to be an attitude that the US team will come through in the end no mater what their present performance indicates. I noticed this attitude most recently in a Sailing World article; it read “the U.S. has historically been significantly stronger in Olympic years than in the three years between Games”. I find no evidence of this. It is true that some teams have come from out of nowhere to win medals like Jolly/Shore in 1988 but the fact is that the US class was strong in the Women’s 470 at that time and they had to beat some very successful sailors at the trials just to get to the Olympics. Our present batch of US Finn sailors have no such domestic obstacle. You can see this attitude in many of our top sailors while you listen to them speak at fundraising dinners. They claim to be getting ready for the big push that will put them over the top when they are really hoping for a miracle at the last minute.

If were hoping that a lot can happen in a year then it’s time for things to start happening.

Fist stop: Cadiz Spain for the ISAF World Sailing Championships.

If the wishes sound to good to be true at least we have some good American keelboat sailors.