Olympic Games

Got an early start today; no gym and 0900 at the venue. Got the boat on the hoist before anyone else was around and got some final sanding done on the keel. Looks pretty good now.

Then we put the stickers on our second mainsail. That is a 2.5 hours job for both Phil and I. We had lunch and went sailing around 1400 with Loof, Bruni and Leo and George, the Greek team. The wind was about 10-12 knots today from 160-165. Pretty normal seabreeze conditions. Tony Rey, the Yngling coach came by after the Yngling race had finished and got some photos of our rig for us. It is very helpful to be able to check the rig laterally, with printed pictures. We had a good session and came in at 1700 and took the rig down to check everything. Everything was were it was supposed to be so we put it back up.

I am on my way to the NBC studio right now to do some comentary with Gary Jobson on today’s racing which you will see in a few hours on Bravo…0:00 EDT and 2100 PDT.

Tomorrow we are not going to the gym, just some stretching and getting down to the boat early again. We need to get our spares all organized and put our spare rig away. Other than that, we are ready to roll.

Today the US Yngling had awesome speed in the light air of the first race and won. We watched them on TV from the dining hall and it was beautiful the way they just cruised out in the front of the fleet on the first windward leg. Unfortunately, they did not fair so well in the second race. In both races, the left was very good.

I think the best performers on team USA at the moment are the men’s 470, Paul Forester and Kevin Burnham. They had a good day and are solidly in second and close to the leaders which are the Brit’s. I think Mark Mendleblatt, (Laser USA) is in 5th over all and our 49er sailors were in 5th overall beofre the last race when they had an OCS (0ver the start line early). That is unfortuante.

Finally, I did bring a batch of the “gold medal” brownies down to the venue to day and gave them to our team mates after the racing.