Olympics

With the Weymouth Olympic Regatta now more than three months behind us, and a deep-dive evaluation of the U.S. Olympic Sailing Program complete, we’re focused on a strategy designed to return U.S. sailors to the podium.

U.S. Paralympic sailors Jen French and JP Creignou succeeded where the U.S. Olympic team fell short, winning silver in the SKUD-18 class at the 2012 Paralympic regatta in Weymouth, England.

“We ran full-speed into something we weren’t expecting,” admitted Dean Brenner, the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Olympic Sailing Program, about the team’s performance at the 2012 Olympics in Weymouth, England.

Never has a U.S. sailing team gone into an Olympics with higher hopes. Never have those hopes been dashed so completely as they were in Weymouth, England.

US Olympic sailing does not apologize for not medaling, but does plan to move toward a more successful 2016 with the help of our publisher, Josh Adams. We wish him, and the team, the best of luck in the next four years of training and hope to see some medals next time.

For full 2012 Olympics coverage, read on and make sure to click the links for more on the team, the competition, the venue and changes in the approach to U.S. Olympic sailing.

The 2012 Olympic regatta is now underway with a total of 380 sailors from around the world—237 men and 143 women—competing for gold in 10 events. Racing started in the Finn, Star and women’s Elliott 6m match-racing classes on Sunday, with the Laser, Laser Radial and 49er classes joining in on Monday.

The International Sailing Federation has suffered serious backlash from the sailing community after eliminating windsurfing from the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and replacing it with kiteboarding. US Sailing has issued a statement establishing their support of the ISAF decision.

The International Sailing Federation has begun holding its women’s skiff and mixed multihull evaluations for the 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition at the High Performance Sailing Centre, Santander, Spain.

Standouts at the Perth event included Paige Railey in the Laser Radial class, and Mark Mendelblatt and Brian Fatih in the Star class, who took bronze in their two events. The match racing team of Anna Tunnicliffe, Deb Capozzi and Molly Vandemoer took gold.