1964 OLYMPIC GAMES
Enoshima 1964 remembered Being an Olympic year, it might be nostalgic to look back at the XVIII Olympiad in 1964, the penultimate time the 5.5 Metres were present at the Olympic Games. Translated from an article by andrea Rossi.
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n 2020 the Olympics are back in Enoshima, the scene of the historic Olympic victory by Australia’s Barrenjoey. The walls of the sailing centre there are endowed by memories of 1964, including several photos of the 5.5 Metres racing in Sagami Bay. Tokyo was the host city while the sailing took place in Enoshima, a small isthmus south of Yokohama, where a new port was designed and equipped specially for the purpose of hosting the Games. At the time, Beppe Croce commented, “The port of Enoshima is certainly today the most beautiful and functional of the touristic and pleasure ports of the world: its mirrored waters of about thirty-five thousand square metres allow moorings of great comfort for many boats, ground installations, distributed over an area more or less impressive as the water mirror, they are almost perfect.” Everything that could be planned, on the ground and on the water, to make the stay of the Olympic yachtsmen comfortable was undoubtedly done. What turned out to be
inadequate were the weather conditions of the entire week. Two typhoons ‘Wilda’ and ‘Clara’ passed over Japan to coincide with the beginning and end of the Games, bringing periods of unpredictable wind and weather. John McNamara, bronze medalist, commented: “The anemometer on a windy day of 23 knots of average, recorded wind jumps from 20 to 25 degrees, with a frequency from a minute and a half to two minutes; the data recording card looked like the electrocardiogram of the terminally sick.” The design challenge, on the other hand, lost the global characteristics that had been found in Naples. The Japanese fleet was largely from the American design school with nine boats out of the (six by Bill Luders, two by Raymond Hunt, Top: Start line in 1964 • Left: Rush VII, Web III and Chaje II • Above: Olympic monument in Enoshima • Above left: Winners plaque in Enoshima
30 • fivepointfive • april 2020
