Olympic Trials Wrap Up - 470 Team USA Finishes 2nd in Women’s Fleet
October 22nd, 2007 by Isabelle
Dear Friends,
We apologize for the silence since Saturday, October 13th. What was at that point essentially decided, is now official: Amanda Clark and Sarah Mergenthaler won the Olympic Trials, qualifying for the Olympics, and we placed 2nd. On Sunday, we went out and sailed our hardest in two races, crossing the finish line in 2nd twice. Below is a photo of us about to cross the finish line the last race of the Trials. We congratulated Clark/Mergenthaler as soon as they sealed the regatta, and received our 2nd place trophies at the end of the day. The silver lining of the cloud is that our training partners, Stu McNay (a fellow Yalie and friendly competitor to Dartmouth) and Graham Biehl won the men’s 470 Olympic Trials — you can visit their campaign website at www.teammb.org
We would like to thank each and every one of you for your tremendous support, especially our sponsors: the Stonington Harbor Yacht Club, RBS Greenwich Capital, Fishers Island Yacht Club, Harken, Kaenon and Samson Ropes. We would also like to thank our families for their unfailing support. We had a boatload of them watching the last days of the Trials — literally!
We would also like to thank our coaches, Peter Alarie and US Sailing Team Coach Skip Whyte. Both of them have been invaluable to our campaign. Below is a photo of Peter watching us racing the second-to-last day of the Trials.
Looking back on the Trials, we had done everything in our power in order to prepare for this regatta since becoming a team only 15 months ago in July 2006. We achieved four top 10 finishes in the eight international regattas that we sailed, 7th at the North Americans, 4th at the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta, 3rd at the Princess Sofia Regatta, and 10th at the 2007 World Championships. Most importantly for us, we improved constantly and always had fun. The biggest change that we could have made was formulating a more concrete strategy for winning a 13 boat regatta where we really only cared about beating one boat — we evolved a strategy by the third day of the Trials, but that was two days and 9 points too late.
We are not exactly sure what the next steps will be, although we can guarantee that we will be in touch. We are strongly considering competing in the 2008 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, in January. After all the hard work we have done, we feel that a podium finish is within our grasp. After that, who knows! Isabelle will be attending law school in August 2008. Depending on whether the 470 stays in the Olympics, we may be getting the band back together for the 2012 Olympics in England. We hear that it is windy there, they speak English, and it is only a five hour flight from the U.S. Much better than China!
Best, as always,
Erin and Isabelle