Clark’s Olympic trial comes December 12
Will Amanda Clark make the U.S. Olympic sailing team? The answer won’t be known until this coming week.
“We’re going wicked fast and our communication and teamwork is better than ever before — we feel more than ready to race,” Ms. Clark wrote in an email to supporters about her Olympic quest this week.
Shelter Island’s 2008 sailing Olympian has been in Perth, Australia for the International Sailing Federation’s 2011 World Championships, the final hurdle for determining who will represent the U.S. in the 2012 Olympics sailing competition in Weymouth, England next summer.
The regatta in Perth is a two-week event. In a posting on her Team GO SAIL Facebook page last week, she reported on the opening day of the event, December 3, that she and her crew Sarah Lihan would not be racing for 10 days.
Ms. Clark explained in an email later that the winner of the US Olympic spot in the women’s 470 category will be the team that has the lowest combined overall placement determined through the championships in Perth and the previous Olympic trial in June that was sailed in Weymouth.
Ms. Clark and Ms. Lihan placed 11th overall in that event. Their sole competition for the US Olympic spot, Erin Maxwell and Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar, finished eighth. In case of a tie, the boat with the better finish in Australia will take the spot.
Maxwell and Kinsolving Farrar won three medals at World Cup events over the last two years and the gold medal at the 2008 World Championships. They won first place at the 2011 Sailing World Cup’s Keilor Woche regatta in Germany in June.
“We are three places behind” Maxwell and Kinsolving Farrar in their Olympic trial ranking, Ms. Clark wrote from Australia last weekend. “Our confidence is building as we have beaten them now in three of the three events we have raced in since June. Right now we have about a week before measurement starts and we will race on the 12th. We will have two races a day, which we will carry GPS trackers for, and our races will start at 2:30 in the afternoon … which is 1:30 in the morning for anyone caring to stay up late!”
In her email to supporters, Ms. Clark wrote: “Going into the first half of the Olympic trials back in early June, our goal was to keep it close, to maintain enough of a point margin as to have enough time to properly train. We met that goal — the difference is a mere three points between us and the other American boat — and we are now reaping the benefits of another six months’ training. We have grown so much as a program, and what’s really incredible is that we still feel, each day, that our learning curve is still so steep. Which is not to say that we haven’t learned enough, but rather a testament more to the fact that we are strong. Strong enough to win, strong enough to bring a medal home next summer. We have beaten our competition at every event since the first half of the trials, and we are ready to put that difference on paper where it matters most—here, next week, at the Worlds. Follow along with us as we complete this part of our dream, it’s going to be great.”
The link provided for tracking the Clark-Lihan GPS beginning Monday, December 12 (which dawns in Australia when it’s still Sunday here) is:
