Can I get an Amen to the proposition that windsurfing looks dismal in the USA? Down numbers. US Sailing Team Olympians finishing 60-something at world championships. Scant visibility accorded a discipline that outside the USA is second only to Lasers in Olympic sailing.
And if you’re not a windsurfer, why even care?
Unless perhaps you care about dropout rates in junior sailing. In that case, my friend, pull up a chair. [more]Adversity breeds opportunity, and opportunity was on the water – and in the air – last week on San Francisco Bay, where a 1 6-year-old from Florida, Austin Emser, won the Techno 293 North Americans.
Don’t be lulled into indifference by a modest turnout for that regatta (18). Ditto the Techno class at the Windsurfing Nationals completed earlier at the Gorge. It matters that Technos are the worldwide standard for beginning juniors. There is a quiet revolution under way.
Soon after the Qingdao Olympiad the “opportunity” thing started gnawing at me, and I had an idea that was absolutely brilliant. So I approached key people at my yacht club to tell them we ought to crank up a junior windsurfing program and grow us some champions to fill an obvious void. The response? They were already all over it. Thus the St. Francis Yacht Club hosted the 2009 Techno 293 North Americans, and I’m not so brilliant after all. But, somebody made something happen . . . Read on: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/09/0802b/
A QUIET (SO FAR) REVOLUTION
by Kimball Livingston
