Regatta Reports
John Dane III and Austin Sperry win the US Star Trials
By Lynn Fitzpatrick
Oct 14, 2007, 22:24

Final Results and reports by Tom Leweck

John Dane III fulfills a life long dream by winning the US Olympic Team Star Trials.

Top 3 teams at the Olympic Trials, photo by Martin McCarthy

At 57 years of age, John Dane has sailed more Olympic Trials in more Olympic class sailboats than most of us could imagine. John was 2nd in the US Dragon Trials in 1968, 4th in the Soling Trials in 1972, 3rd in the Finn Trials in 76, and 4th in the Star in 1984. Three of the four times that John competed in the US Trials, the person who won went on to win the Olympic Gold Medal. “I’ve sailed the Trials in four different boats and never been to the Olympics. Most of the time the person who has won, has gone on to win the gold. The sad part is that the one who wins the Trials goes. If you don’t have a good regatta, you don’t go.”

For John, sailing and winning the US Olympic Trials is an unfulfilled dream. He and his son-in-law, Austin Sperry, have been the top ranked US Star team for a while. John claims to have spent more time in the gym preparing for this Trials than he ever had in the past. He has crossed trained in the Finn and has sailed at venues all over the world in the Star. He has also had an incredible list of training partners just over the past year including past and present Star World Champions, Freddy Loof and Anders Ekstrom and Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada. John, president and CEO of Trinity Yachts, has been a generous supporter of US Sailing and has even made significant contributions earmarked for the US Olympic Sailing Team.

The wind was in the low to mid-teens during the last day of racing and more consistent that the preceding days. Going into the day, the top three teams were separated by two points. It came down to staying clean and making sure that you stayed ahead of your competition if you were George Szabo and Andrew Scott, John Dane III and Austin Sperry and Mark Mendleblatt and Magnus Liljedahl. In the end, John Dane and Austin Sperry who averaged 3.93 points per race over the 15 races scored, won the last race of the regatta. They, along with the second place team of George Szabo and Andrew Scott, were the only teams to have won three races at the Trials.

While John Dane III was the oldest skipper among the top three, Dane and Sperry are not the oldest crew when you look at combined age. They may have the largest differential in between the age of the skipper and crew (28 years), but Mendleblatt/Liljedahl are one year older when it comes to combined age. Szabo and Scott are relative youngsters with a combined age that is 14 years younger than the Dane/Sperry combination. Mark Reynolds and Hal Haenel who qualified the United States for the Olympics in the Star class by finishing 12th at this year’s ISAF Sailing World Championships and were 6th at the Trials have a combined age of 101 although that will change in a few days when Hal has his birthday. We’ve heard it before; it’s all about peaking at the right time. Let’s hope that Dane and Sperry will continue to ride their high through August of 2008 and the Showdown in Qingdao.

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