Hello everyone.

Well after 26 hours of traveling I finally made it home! It’s good to be home. We left China early because our regatta was over due to the fact that we did not make the medal race (final 10 boats) We finished 12th overall. It was a great learning experience, we learned some valuable lessons that even the best coaching in the world cannot teach you. There is nothing more important in this game than experience, it was very evident over this past few weeks. I look around at the olympic regatta and in our class (star) most every competitor has either been to the olympics before, won a medal and has won a world championship in most cases more than once. Basically we go out and compete with the Tiger Woods of sailing every time we leave the dock, funny thing is that instead of 1 Tiger, there are about 8 teams that are that good. Robert Schedit of Brazil, won the regatta. Robert is new to the star class, he is not new to winning. Prior to sailing the star boat Robert dominated the single handed Laser class, winning 8 world championships, 2 gold medals and 1 silver medal, oh by the way he just won the star world championship last month (and finished 2nd at the star worlds last year) needless to say this guy is not human..

The last day of racing was moving day for JD and I, We were in 9th place overall and with 2 good races left would could move up to 5th. Well on the first race of the day I made a call that sunk the ship. With 3 seconds to go JD and I set up about 3 lengths up from the Pin boat, I saw the Race Committee looking up the line I figured we had another length togo and told JD to go for it, well I was wrong and we were over early and had to gybe out and round the pin boat and star over while the rest of the fleet is racing up the beat to the first mark. The race only got worse from there… We actually caught up at the top mark and rounded 7th, good considering we had to restart. But the downwind was a killer for us, it seemed no matter where we went on the race track it was the wrong way and we lost to the other side, maybe we were just off the pace, still replaying what went wrong in my mind. The second race of the day wasn’t much better and in the end we missed the top ten by 3 points…

Everybody says go into the Olympics and treat it like it’s another regatta. I have news for you people, it’s not like every other regatta. Your half way around the world, in a communist country, people don’t speak your language, worrying about eating the wrong food and getting sidelined with food poisoning Totally out of your normal element, movie cameras, the venue, the police escort bus rides to and from the venue, the heat and humidity, the sitting around waiting for wind, not seeing your family for over a month, all this stuff starts to take its toll mentally. At the end of the day the teams that can get past this and focus on sailing are the teams that will win, period. Robert Schedit rounded most weather marks in 10-12th position he would pick boats up every leg and would have a shot at winning most races, this is how you win regattas, he seems to have the model down better than anyone else right now.

At the end of the day there are 10-12 boats that could win this regatta, its about peaking at the right moment and being comfortable with your surroundings.

Next up for JD and I are the US Olympic Trials in October (3rd-14th) it;s actually very simple you win the trials and you go to the Olympics. It’s not going to be easy but JD and I have consistently beaten every American and every regatta lately. I wanted to thank you guys for keeping up with the Olympic Rat race, I enjoy reading your feedback.

Back to the California for the next month and a half… I will keep everyone posted!

Austin