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By Sam Greenfield
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Once the future of the Star class, 23-year-old crew Josh Revkin and 25-year-old Tomas Hornos now face uncertainty. As the class’s top rookies, they were invited to the Star Sailors League Finals.
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Photo: SSL/Carlo Borlenghi
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The Star Sailors League Finals in the Bahamas was made possible by Michel Niklaus, of Switzerland, who hosted all 36 sailors. The League’s goal is to promote and support the world’s best small-boat sailors by hosting an annual circuit of four big-purse regattas. Photo: SSL/Marc Rouiller
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At the opening ceremony of the 2013 Star Sailors League Finals at the Nassau YC, 36 of the world’s best sailors, most of them Star Class stalwarts, try to navigate the impossible: a group photo. The competitors have been ushered from the bar to the main hall, where they gather
$200,000 in prize money. First place takes home $40,000, but even last gets $1,000.” Money aside, competitors stand together like family. Young and old, Star sailors respect one another because it’s not about the boat so much as the chance to race against and learn from the best. One of the sailors here is 30-year-old Olympian Frithjof Kleen, of Germany, who tells me, “All the best sailors, from all kinds of classes, they meet in the end in the Star.” E. W. Etchells won his first Star Worlds in 1951; Lowell North in 1957; Paul Elvstrøm in 1966; Dennis Conner in 1971; Buddy Melges in 1978; Paul Cayard in 1988; Torben Grael in 1990; Iain Percy in 2002; and Robert Scheidt in 2007—you get the idea. Moorland devours his meatballs as Sir Durwood Knowles, the
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96-year-old Star legend and Bahamian icon, is escorted into center frame. Knowles’ faded red Star from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics is a permanent fixture in front of the yacht club. The hallway becomes hushed. All eyes are on Knowles, the Bahamas’ first Olympic gold medalist, who is surrounded by sailors with 36 combined world championship titles and 11 Olympic medals. For one week, as invited guests of the Star Sailors League, they’re all going to live rich. That is to say, a few pegs below professional athlete and much better than your average keelboat sailor. All I can think about as I drink in the scene is the staggering cost of flying in and accommodating all the sailors, of shipping boats from Miami, of the apparel, the PR, and the $150 bar tabs for each competitor, all to race on Montague Bay for $200,000 prize money. Technicians from Virtual Eye—used at the 34th America’s Cup—are here to run live graphics alongside professional commentary via a YouTube feed managed by a video production crew. A video game is featured on VirtualRegatta.com and there are boxes of custom jerseys that display each sailor’s individual League ranking and their respec-
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breeze. Master photographer Carlo Borlenghi, from Italy, herds the hulking figures like an air-traffic controller. Robert Scheidt, of Brazil, drifts to the back row. A week earlier, after a nine-year hiatus from sailing Lasers, the Olympic legend won his ninth Laser World Championship. His childhood sparring partner and Olympic Star crew, Bruno Prada, stands next to—and larger than—New Haven, Conn., native Josh Revkin, already a sizable 6'4" and 255 pounds. The 23-year-old crew finished 20th at the 2013 Star Worlds with Tomas Hornos, 25. As the top junior team at the Worlds, they earned the League Finals’ rookie wildcard. As Paul Cayard drops a knee in front of Scheidt, professional sailing commentator Digby Fox, flown in from England, asks over the PA system, “Now are we sure that’s everyone?” A Norwegian voice booms out from the buffet room, “No wait!” Petter Moorland Pedersen lopes into the room, balancing a plate of meatballs. The experienced Star sailor is crewing for Finn world champion Ed Wright, of England. It’s Wright’s first regatta in the Star. “Now this is uncommon in sailing,” says Fox when everyone’s settled and smiling. “We’ve got
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beneath white banners swaying in the warm Bahamian
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tive national flag. I count three photographers and an international entourage of sailing journalists—including this correspondent—all flown to Nassau, put up, and made witness to the world’s most unprecedented Star regatta outside of the Olympics. When Sir Durwood Knowles says, “We are all here tonight thanks to the generosity of Michel,” I realize there’s not a single sponsor logo on site. There’s just a sharp-featured Swiss named Michel Niklaus. Niklaus, a successful real estate developer from Lausanne, is the visionary behind the Star Sailors League. He quietly began work on his opus in early 2011 when the International Sailing Federation announced that after London 2012, the Star—an Olympic staple since 1932—was out. Sailing is one of the few sports that defies the laws of athletic prime: As proof, Sir Durward Knowles sailed his eighth and final Olympics in 1988, at age 70, in the Star. Because of the direction (some here say misdirection) of ISAF, however, Niklaus felt the best small-boat sailors no longer had “the future in their hands.” He reached out to Xavier Rohart, a 45-year-old French Olympian and father of two. Rohart’s country pours untold millions of corporate sponsorship into offshore sailing, but even at the highest level, small-boat sailing has never enjoyed such support. “Why can’t we earn money sailing in an Olympic class?” asks Rohart. “I did it for more than 20 years, and I’m poor. I give all my life to this and I get nothing, so we tried to find an idea for future generations.” “ISAF has changed sailing so much,” laments Prada, who says that their policy makers fail to represent sailors’ voices. “To make the sport more attractive, you shouldn’t be changing the sport.
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It’s about changing the way you show the sport. And who should vote are the sailors. We are the sport; we should decide.” The idea for the Star Sailors League was inspired by the Association of Tennis Professionals, which launched as a player-ranking system in 1972 and marked the start of a 17-year transition from Federation to player control in men’s professional tennis. The League launched in January 2013 as a ranking list of every skipper and crew that competed in a Star regatta that year. The top 13 boats from the ranking’s 1,000 skippers and 1,400 crews received invitations to the Finals in Nassau, plus five wild cards. The League’s goal is to promote and support the world’s best small-boat sailors by hosting an annual circuit of four big-purse regattas, akin to the tennis Grand Slam tournaments with prize money, a finals championship with a final ranking like the Tennis Masters, and mentor networks and training programs to preserve the class’s tradition of passing technical knowledge from masters to rising talent. Appeasing small-boat sailors is easy, but what about the fans? How old will they be and what will draw them to the League? And how will the League transform sailors into idols? They’re all relevant questions, batted around among the competitors themselves. “All sport is about idols,” says Prada, “but sailing, I don’t know why, has never promoted sailors.” Late in the afternoon on the third day, once the final 10 crews have been selected for the Grand Finals, I notice a group of junior sailors loitering between the pool and outdoor bar, gazing up at the scoreboard where Scheidt and Prada lead the fleet. “Do you know any of these
Top: Bubbles on the podium: Mateuez Kusznierewicz and Dominik Zycki, Robert Scheidt, and Brian Fatih and Mark Mendelblatt.
Xavier Rohart and Pierre-Alexis Ponsot were sixth after nine qualifier races, and sixth in the quarterfinals, missing the cut to the four-boat finals.
Photo: SSL/
Photo: SSL/
Carlo Borlenghi
Carlo Borlenghi
Diego Negri, a three-time Olympian (twice in the Laser, once in the Star) and Sergio Lambertenghi, of Italy, finished fourth in the finals.
Photo: SSL/
Photo: SSL/
Photo: SSL/
Carlo Borlenghi
Marc Rouiller
Carlo Borlenghi
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Xavier Rohart , of France, who campaigned a Star for more than 20 years, envisions the Star Sailors League as a way to make a living.
with no Olympic status and literally dozens of one-design classes to choose from. The class needs to find a way to go back to its onedesign roots and drive down the cost of hulls, spars, and sails. The boats are still fun to sail, and physically one of the most demanding one-designs, which are reasons it’s still popular, but the problem is that the discrepancy between a newcomer and a veteran in the class is huge and the learning curve is too high.” Hornos is 25; his father introduced him to Star sailing at age 16. “People now are drawn to things that go fast,” he continues. “If it doesn’t have an asymmetric kite, carbon rig, or foils, it sucks and has no merit. People don’t like the idea of sailing slower keelboats, and the Star gets clumped into that even though there is just as much merit winning a race of boats going five knots as there is at 25.” Conner is the only sailor bold enough to broach the topic of the League’s commercial viability beyond Niklaus’ checkbook. “I don’t know where he got the nerve to do this,” he says at the closing ceremony dinner at which Scheidt and Prada are awarded $40,000 cash for winning the Finals, “but Michel is onto something that could be the real deal here.” Next to every sailor’s plate, including Conner’s, varying amounts of cash are stuffed into sailcloth envelopes. “It’s a chance for you guys to get paid to do what you love for the commitment you make, and one day it could be real money,” Conner says. “But for Michel to make this work, he needs to find some sponsorship. You can’t expect the guy to just keep ponying out of pocket.” The room is silent as Conner finishes his closing statement. “You could help him, and if you help him raise the money, you’re just going to help yourselves.”
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Top: Star class royalty Paul Cayard, Sir Durwood Knowles, of the Bahamas, and Robert Scheidt. Cayard was invited as the fleet’s VIP entry.
guys?” I ask, pointing up. The sailors respond with a shy chorus of “no.” But Paul De Souza, a 14-yearold Laser sailor, speaks up. “Yeah, Robert Scheidt. He’s the Brazilian.” De Souza tells me his favorite event is the Volvo Ocean Race. I ask him, “Why should junior sailors get to know sailing professionals?” He replies, “Well, I think that if you get to know the sailors, you’ll feel more passion for the race. And it was great they changed to onedesign, so it’s about the sailor’s ability and not so much on the design teams.” But are kids like De Souza interested in top sailors racing small boats? As I ponder this, I notice Dennis Conner, the League’s anointed “Godfather” standing nearby eavesdropping. I ask De Souza, “OK, do you know what Robert Scheidt looks like?” He admits he doesn’t, and then Conner chimes in, addressing the group. “You see that guy up there on the phone?” He points a finger at Scheidt, just 30 feet away. “Why don’t you go talk to him?” They nod, confusion written across each face, and one grunts a polite affirmation. After Conner ambles back to the bar I ask them, “Do you know who that was?” They all trade glances and the youngest answers, “His coach?” With the exception of Hornos and Revkin, the sailors here are fixtures of the Star’s past, and even with Niklaus’ noble self-funded attempt with the League, Hornos is well aware that the cache of the once vaunted Star is at risk without its Olympic status. “The future of the Star is not the brightest,” says Hornos, pointing out that the League is too much in development to put more boats on the line, yet. “It’s hard to say if it will die off. I’m biased and hope it won’t, but one thing’s for sure: It is in a critical point now,