Jobson, Birkenfeld On A Hard Road Back
By Rich Roberts
As printed in The Log Newspaper

With the Olympic Games in Athens less than four months away, a lot of people who hoped to be there now know they won't be, but Gary Jobson still has it in his date book. In indelible ink.

He had to cancel a speaking appearance at the Long Beach Yacht Club a little over a year ago. It was the day after he learned the reason he always felt so tired wasn't because he was working so hard as the world's top TV sailing commentator but because he had lymphoma.

Then, days before the Congressional Cup match racing classic April 24-28, he had to cancel another appearance at LBYC to receive an honorary Crimson Blazer---the traditional winner's prize---for his contributions to the event and the sport.

It wasn't the lymphoma exactly, but the treatments for it. The chemotherapy and stem cell replacement had destroyed his immune system and now he'd landed back in the hospital with pneumonia, chicken pox and shingles.

"You can't imagine how disappointed I am to miss the Long Beach event," Jobson e-mailed from Annapolis. "I was really touched that LBYC thought of me. This most recent setback has been the toughest of the past year because it was unexpected. I'm now 11 days out of the hospital and working with a physical therapist to get walking again. What a tough road. But I fully intend to recover. Gary.

"P.S. I'll be in Athens covering the Games."

About a week earlier Kimberly Birkenfeld, once the top-ranked American woman boardsailor, managed to drop by some days at the U.S. Olympic Trials for the Star class in Miami. In a wheelchair. Her boyfriend Magnus Liljedahl was crew for Andy Lovell of New Orleans.

At one time, when Liljedahl was crew for Mark Reynolds, he hoped he and she could hang out together around the Acropolis this summer, but that didn't work out. Birkenfeld's hopes and health were dashed in the 2002 pre-Olympics at Athens in a collision with a New Zealand team coach boat.

Then Lovell and Liljedahl finished second to Paul Cayard and Phil Trinter in the Star trials after a valiant effort to overcome a broken mast that cost them the first two races on opening day.

Two races? Yep. They were OCS (get to that in a minute) in the first race but were never informed because of the race committee's dumb policy of not notifying individual boats that started early.

So they kept sailing in 20 knots of wind until their mast broke, which meant they couldn't sail the day's second race, either.

The official explanation from US Sailing: "That's the way they do it in the Olympics."

Well, most sailors will say, that's an even dumber reason because there were only 22 Star boats at the trials and will be only 17 in the Games. Easy call.

OCS is the inexplicable acronym handed down a few years ago from the ultimate wisdom of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF). It replaced the old standard "PMS," which meant "premature starter" but had a double nuance too politically incorrect for sensitive society.

And what, pray tell, does OCS mean?

On course side.

Yes, sailing fans, this is what ISAF's intellectuals contribute to our sport. Overly Correct Stupidity.

But I digress.

When I wrote about Birkenfeld last August on the anniversary of her crash, she was walking and had even been on her board once.

Then, this message arrived during the Star trials:

"Due to regression health status, I am currently in search of the country's top neurologist who specializes in neck and skull base trauma. As soon as Athens Hygeia Hospital agrees to forward all my medical records and I am able to get an appointment with the appropriate doctor, I am hopeful that I will get an explanation for this regression. If anyone has high-level contacts in the medical world, please inform them of my need to find a qualified neurologist."

Responses could be sent through her Web site: www.kimberly2004.com, or to 2475 Brickell Ave., Miami, FL 33129. She received some promising responses and would welcome more.

One person she still hasn't heard from is the former New Zealand coach who drove the boat involved.

Like Birkenfeld, Jobson is determined to overcome. If anyone doubts that, tune in to "25 Years of Sailing" on ESPN Classic Wednesday, May 19, at 6 p.m. PDT. Jobson produced and hosts the one-hour program.

Meanwhile, his and Birkenfeld's circumstances have focused a perspective on them beyond the playing fields of sport.

Terry Hutchinson, like Jobson, lives in Annapolis.
They've known each other since Hutchinson was a kid.

"When I was 13 years old---in fact, it was the night his first daughter came home after being born---he took me down to a feeder regatta for the SORC in St. Petersburg and I sailed with him on a boat called Jubilation," Hutchinson said.

"He's always been a mentor for me, and whenever I have a question about which direction I should take in my career I go talk to Gary because he's been around so much. He's been a hundred per cent right for everything I've ever asked him. I call it the Jobson scale."

Hutchinson came within a couple of hundred yards of winning the 40th Congressional Cup (see story elsewhere), but he'll get over losing a sailboat race. He'd trade Jobson's recovery for a thousand Crimson Blazers.

"For the people in Annapolis that are tied to sailing, it's a tragedy to see his health [less than] 100 per cent," Hutchinson said. "The impact he has on our sport we're feeling the benefits of now. Every professional sailor has him to thank in some way . . . paving the way to be a professional sailor, to put it on TV and to show ESPN that this was a viable sport to market."

Hutchinson recalled watching Jobson's breakthrough presentation of the 1986-87 America's Cup at Fremantle.

"I was a freshman in college. I remember staying up to 3 o'clock in the morning watching the races on ESPN.

"Anybody who's involved with sailboat racing now on a professional level has him to thank for it being as good as it is."