Clark wins spot on Olympic team

“We did it!” was the triumphant message from Shelter Island’s Amanda Clark on Facebook early Saturday morning Eastern Standard Time after she and her crew Sarah Lihan of Ft. Lauderdale won a berth on the 2012 US Olympic sailing team in Perth, Australia on Saturday.

It will be the second Olympic medal quest for Clark, 29, who started sailing lessons at age 5 at the Shelter Island Yacht Club. She competed in Beijing in 2008 and has been ranked on the U.S. sailing team since 1998. She has represented the nation in 16 world championship events.

Clark-Lihan finished a week of sailing in 12th place in the women’s 470 category among 48 international competitors at the International Sailing Federation’s Sailing World Championships, just three places ahead of her American competition for the Olympic team, Erin Maxwell of Wilton, Connecticut and Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar of New York and nearby Fishers Island.

After a day off on Friday, Clark-Lihan beat Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar in the week’s last two races Saturday, finishing 7th to Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar’s 16th in race nine and 14th in race 10 to Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar’s 17th.

“She is thrilled beyond belief,” her husband Greg Nissen, director of Shelter Island’s Camp Quinipet, where the couple lives, wrote in an email. “It is nice to win when you are the underdog. After all, she only met her crew last February and started sailing with her in March. Let’s say odds were not in her favor.”

Going in to Saturday’s final two races of the regatta, the teams were in a literal dead heat. Having placed 8th to Clark-Lihan’s 11th in June’s first round of the Olympic trials in Weymouth, England, Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrrar were ranked number one in the world in the 470 category by the ISAF, had been tagged as among the athletes to watch in Perth and had a three-point lead when competition began for the 470-class on Monday.

It was a seesaw battle through the week, with Clark-Lihan doing well on Monday and Tuesday, including a third-place finish, but stumbling on Wednesday, losing two races — one with a 33rd-place finish. That put them in 16th place, two spots behind Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar.

But they resumed their winning ways on Thursday, finishing 13th and 5th in races seven and eight to Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar’s 16th and 20th. That dropped Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar from 14th to 16th place in the standings.

“We executed our day as planned,” Ms. Clark commented on her Team GOSAIL Facebook page on Thursday, “and now have a small lead in the standings going into the last two scheduled races. Looking forward to an exciting day of racing tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow” proved just the ticket with two more victories over Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar to win a place on the US Olympic team.

Mr. Nissen sent an email to supporters and donors Saturday morning announcing her success:

“My wife, my amazing wife, Amanda Clark, is headed to the Summer 2012 London Olympic Games to represent the USA in the Women’s 470 Sailboat Class — for a second time!” he wrote.

“We thought one Olympics was awesome in 2008, twice is just out of this world! Thanks to all of you who have been checking in, following along at teamgosail.org, praying, cheering etc. etc. for her. A huge shout out goes to her crew Sarah Lihan and a shout out to Sarah Chin for all her work and training as the team developed to the 2008 Games.”

Ms. Chin, Ms. Clark’s former crew, dropped out last year after deciding she was not as committed a competitor as she had to be; since then, Ms. Clark and Ms. Lihan have had to play catch-up as a team with Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar, who have been together for years.

“It is only Amanda and her single crew member on the boat,” Mr. Nissen wrote. “It goes without saying how critical a great crew is to have. Also, all those who have supported her [Amanda’s] ‘habit’ by contributing financially — Thank you! You have made it possible for a girl with a dream and drive to live it and win it for us all. She will be home for Christmas and then on to Miami for training in January. Check out teamgosail.org for more info, links to Facebook etc. etc. to follow along to the games!”

The winner of the US Olympic spot in the women’s 470 category was the team with the lowest combined placement in Perth and the previous Olympic trials in Weymouth, outside London, where the 2012 Olympic races will be sailed. Clark-Lihan finished in 11th place there, three places behind Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar.

The women’s 470 regatta in Perth was won by a Spanish boat followed by teams from Israel, Great Britain, New Zealand and Japan. The competition closed on Sunday with a medal race in which Clark-Lihan did not compete.

Over the week’s nine Olympic trial races, Clark-Lihan were the top finishers of three American 470 teams in the competition, with Maxwell-Kinsolving Farrar close behind at 15th and Cara Vavolotis and Lara Dallman Weiss in last place out of 48 boats.

On Sunday, Mr. Nissen wrote in response to an email request to him and Ms. Clark for comment that his wife was “in full travel mode to get home.” He said she had been in Australia “just shy of two months. She has to load containers, move out, etc. etc. so she really can’t make any calls with time difference, etc. — especially with spotty Internet service.”

Mr. Nissen described the skipper that Ms. Clark has to beat, Erin Maxwell, as “a great sailor and is well versed in competition.” Her crew “Isabel [Kinsolving Farrar] went to the 2004 games as the crew of a 470 team, so they were favored” in Perth and ranked number-one in the world in the 470 category by the ISAF .

“Fortunately ‘new Sarah’ [Sarah Lihan, who replaced Sarah Chin last year as Ms. Clark’s crew] was a quick study, has the perfect body type (tall and strong) and was a top ranked Laser sailor so Amanda basically found another skipper for the boat — a world ranked sailor trained to what they needed to know” and they “gelled fast” as a team.

“This is what is exciting,” he added. “If they became the best in the country in eight months, they might be able to actually bring home a medal by next summer. We don’t want to be greedy, but that would just be over the top awesome.”

“The support of the Island here is awesome,” Mr. Nissen wrote. “The work Sarah Chin put in until this past year was critical, the funding — of which about 50 percent has to come from donors — was incredible, even as the underdog — folks still pitched in. New Sarah’s commitment to a ‘chance’ of winning was just an incredible move and now we are going into Christmas totally overwhelmed with joy.”