Olympic Trials Pre-View
October 6th, 2007 by Isabelle
Dear Friends,
For us, the U.S. Olympic 470 Trials next week is the culmination of 12 months of hard work as a team and many years of dreaming. In the past two months we have had many intense training days here in Long Beach, but all that has tapered in the past week. We took four days off of sailing at the beginning of the week in order to fully rest. Measurement for the regatta started Wednesday, and we completed our boat measurement yesterday, Thursday, October 4th. For the first time in more than a year we left the boat park with absolutely no more work to do on our boat!
We took our equipment and all of our race sails for a “shake-down” sail today in 20-25 knots and big 6-10′ waves — awesome! If only the racing could have started today. Below is one of Peter Alarie’s photos of us working hard downwind last week. For more fantastic 470 photos, most of which are taken by Peter, please visit my Picasa photo albums:
The Trials is a marathon regatta: we will have 16 races over the course of nine days. Two races each day Sunday - Tuesday, a day off Wednesday, and then racing again Thursday - Sunday, October 14th. Racing is scheduled to start at 12 noon PST. A total of 13 men’s and women’s 470’s will be racing together, with five women’s and eight men’s teams.
We will be sending out updates during the Trials, but you can also check the website for scores:
http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/OlympicTrials/
The regatta is being run jointly by the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club and the U.S. Sailing Center Long Beach.
Wish us luck!
Best,
Erin and Isabelle