A Pan American Perspective
By Bill Faude
(AKA #27, the 27th
potential crew member the Starcks asked to sail in the Pan Am trials
before one accepted.)
As I write this, we've been home from Brazil for 10
days. In that time, I've gotten warm again. I haven't needed my
magic wool hat (the one that was knitted for me by Audrey Mattesson
and recovered and returned to me after capsizes after being in 2
lakes and the Pacific Ocean. I've been in three sailboat races,
haven't touched a line in any of them and we've won all three! My
2.5-year-old has taken permanent possession of 'her' silver medal.
She occasionally lets me look at it—if she can be interrupted in her
quest to pulverize it on the mudroom floor. One more thing: I miss
the Lighting family we were with in Brazil.
We learned a lot participating in an Olympic-style
event. If you'd like, you can go to
www.lightninginrio.blogspot.com
and read a little bit about what it felt like to me to be in the
middle of that amazing event. The USOC and US Sailing gave us
incredible support. We had very diligent coaching. We had an
incredible trainer. We were surrounded with security. It was
fantastic to bond with our teammates on the US Sailing team—former
Olympic medalists, former Rolex winners, future gold medalists. It
was incredible to sail a regatta among all that hoopla…speaking of
which, we even became friends with both men's and women's US hoop
team members. All that was amazing.
But perhaps even a more amazing thing than anything
about the actual sailing in the games was being a Lightning Sailor
in the games. I never understood how important—who wonderful being
in the Pan American Games is to the International Lightning Class. I
was President of ILCA for two years. For 10+ years before that and
at every major meeting before and during that time someone, Jim
Carson, Larry MacDonald Sr. Dave Sprague or someone with equally
good perspective on International Sailing would make a report on the
outlook for the Lightning staying in the Pan American Games. It was
generally pretty iffy. We had 6 or 7 countries interested in sailing
in the games. The Pan American Sailing Organization wanted more
countries to participate. If we didn't get more countries to sail,
we'd be in trouble. We were always told how critical Pan American
status was to the Lightning in South America. I've got to tell you,
at that time, those guys sounded like a broken record to me. We
would never really lose the Lightning in the Pan Ams. Would we?
My gosh I was so wrong. Maybe the only reason they
sail Lightnings in those games is that those folks worked so hard to
keep the boat in those games. My Lightning friends from different
countries won medals because of the behind-the-scenes work those
games. Andy and Bill and Heather. Larry and Julie-Marie and Trevor.
Matt and Sean and Steve. Then for one games the Lighting was
actually out of the games. And Brian who won the US trials didn't
get to go. I had no idea what a complete bummer that was until two
weeks ago. My advice:
1. Hug one of the
people who've always understood…and has put in the time to keep our
beloved square boats in the games.
2. Think hard about
whether you know a sailor from Mexico who might like to sail the
Southern Circuit next Winter. It would be fantastic to have a
Lightning with MEX on the main next time in Puerta Villarta in 2011.
I've already got two Snipe Sailors from Paraguay who are prime
candidates and I'm workin them.
Every night in the blog, there was a section called
"The Neatest Thing That Happened Today." It was dedicated every
night to Sabrina Starck and Camryn Faude. I'm going to end this
article with a short list of the Neatest things that happened during
our whole Pan American Games experience.
• Matt Fisher showing me his Pan American Games gold
medal from Havana.
• Watching Nelson Schmidt measure the Lightnings. The
guy knows what he's doing. He came down from Sao Palo with just a
few days notice—because the Lightning Class needed him. I know he
burned up the long distance lines with Bill Clausen before he came
down. He made the process fun too.
• Getting to the beach at Pt. Abino late on a Friday
night after a week of work—before a weekend of practicing—and having
Julie and Camryn already be there.
• Larry and Debbie and Michael and Jody and Bob and
Sarah around the campfire that night.
• Coming into the venue in Rio one morning and
running into David Sprague…who had flown down to Rio from Toronto
just to attend the kind of meeting he's been attending for years.
The kind of meeting that keeps the Lightning in the games. He stayed
in Brazil about 12 hours—and flew about 25. He didn't leave before
he sent an email to his office from right there in the boat park—we
needed to know who'd had a good first day at the Lightning Worlds.
• Surviving (narrowly) a training run from Key
Biscayne over the causeway to Coral Reef Yacht Club on Memorial Day
weekend while we were practicing. Mental note to self: next time,
carbon fiber bike!
• Getting an email from Matt Burridge during the
games and realizing that people were watching…and rooting for us.
• Watching Tito and Diego and Cristian get their gold
medals our of the corner of my eye—and being proud of our friends.
• Getting a hug from Claudio, Gunnar and Silva after
getting their medals and being proud of our friends.
• Watching Richard Walsh, Jim and Alicia Cameron of
team Canada win a race handily after sailing a very brave first beat
up a side of the course we were curious about but didn't think would
pan out.
• Going up wind with Juan Santos and team on a
practice day and remembering that he goes pretty fast. Then meeting
his Son on shore. That was neat.
• Ice cold Kwat: Official beverage of every meal for
13 days in the Pan Am Village cafeteria.
• Waking up very early one morning, kicking the
cobwebs around and figuring out I was still in the village. Then
being psyched that nobody in the first 26 people my teammates asked
said yes.
