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Human Interest
This Article Last Updated: Oct 14th, 2010 - 15:13:49
Reprinted courtesy of
Cover photo by Fried Elliott
Fantastic
2009 Star World Champion (and Quantum sailmaker) George Szabo surfs downhill on his Folli Star with crew Mark Strube during the Class Western Hemisphere Championships in Nassau, enjoying what 1988 world champion Paul Cayard describes as the best sailing area in the world…hard to disagree. The series was eventually won by the fast-improving pair of Richard Clarke and Tyler Bjorn, with Augie Diaz second, having borrowed Robert Scheidt’s crew Bruno Prada for the occasion. Szabo/Strube finished 5th.
After many years of technical stalemate the Stars have come alive in the past few years, with new boats from the three leading builders as well as several experimental one-offs. The differences are extremely modest, though as Mader Star designer Juan Kouyoumdjian confirmed after Percy and Simpson won gold in Biejing on a specially built version of his own latest design: “They could have won the medal using any of the better boats.”
The need to develop these new boats has, however, contributed to new-build prices accelerating upwards in this historic but ultra-competitive class, which must be having a negative effect in terms of encouraging young sailors to follow the lead of former Finnistes like Percy, Xavier Rohart of France and Freddy Loof of Sweden as well as Laser legend Robert Scheidt, all recent Star world champions. That said, it is campaigning costs, rather than the boats themselves, at the top level that have moved up into the stratosphere, with many Olympic programmes now budgeting for upwards of US$300,00-350,000 per year. Heady stuff for most talented but impoverished young dingy sailors…
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