The Log Newspaper - Worlds of Sailing Greats Collide In Star Trials
By Rich Roberts
(As printed in The Log Newspaper)

Mark Reynolds has three Olympic medals---two golds and a silver, a rare feat in the sport of sailing. He is the only person who has won two Olympic gold medals in the Star class.

Mark Reynolds (left) and Steve Erickson. Photo © Dan Nerney/Rolex

But over two decades Paul Cayard has become better known and probably made more money because of his success in sailing's marquee events. He was the first American to lead a team to victory in the Whitbread Round the World Race (now the Volvo Ocean Race) and has been a major player in the world's premier sailing event, the America's Cup. Twice he has led teams into the challenger finals, once into the final match.

Would Mark Reynolds trade places with Paul Cayard? Would Cayard swap with Reynolds?

Reynolds notes, "I read what Paul said once: 'Everything else I sail I get paid. In Stars I pay, which shows how much I enjoy doing it.' "

The separate sailing worlds of these two Californians are about to collide again in the U.S. Olympic Trials for the Star class at Miami starting Saturday. After 16 races over nine days, only the winning boat will sail at Athens in August. It could be either or neither of them, the class is so strong.

The Star is the anachronism of Olympic class boats, dating to 1911. Alongside sleeker designs, its somewhat boxy lines were already passé when it joined the Olympic lineup in 1932.

And yet it survives as the most prestigious class in the world, a common denominator for the greatest sailors of more than half a century. Paul Elvstrom, Lowell North, Dennis Conner, Buddy Melges and their peers sailed many other kinds of boats successfully but count a special glory on their
résumés: world champions in the Star.

As Reynolds and Cayard do.

Both grew up in sailing locales---Reynolds in San Diego, the cradle of great Star sailors, and Cayard in San Francisco---but charted separate courses. Reynolds has sailed mostly Stars and made his living selling sails. He runs the Quantum Sails loft in San Diego. Most of his rivals, including Cayard, are customers.

Cayard went from Stars to make a good living sailing big, high-profile boats, but he keeps coming back to the Star, to his sailing roots. At 44, he is experiencing an unfulfilled mid-life crisis.

"I'm not making any money off this," he said. "In fact, it's costing me quite a bit. When you get to be 44 you're not young anymore, and you're not old. You're in that transition zone, and it's nice to be able to step back into the past. There's a lot of ways you can do that. You can buy a Ferrari, get a new wife. This little thing I'm trying is to go to the Olympics."

Reynolds, 48, has been to the last four from 1988. In context, that's a remarkable achievement for a sport that allows only one entry per country in each class and for a country where the competition in his class is so keen.

Cayard would settle for one time. This time. He is giving it his absolute best shot.

"On the pure sports side, winning a gold medal is something I'd still love to attain," Cayard said. "It's unique in awards because it needs no explanation. In sailing you can be a five-time world champion, but there are a hundred world championships a year. But you tell somebody that you won a gold medal at the Olympics . . . that's why I've put in so much effort."

He and his crew, Phil Trinter of Lorain, Ohio, seem to be ready. They represented the U.S. in the Pre-Olympic regatta at Athens last summer and won the silver medal.

Their campaign started after Cayard was beached into limbo by Oracle team boss Larry Ellison, the software mega-billionaire, before the 2003 America's Cup for reasons still unexplained to him or anyone else.

His contract kept him on Oracle's payroll until the end of the Cup. He stayed around home with wife Icka and their two kids killing time with what he calls "honey-do" projects until, growing restless, he started sailing the Star again. Eventually it grew into what amounts to a mini-America's Cup campaign.

How many competitors at Miami will have their private personal physical trainers, plus coaches with expensive chase boats? Cayard and Trinter will.

Paul Cayard (right) and Phil Trinter. Photo © Dan Nerney/Rolex

Will that be enough? It's been said that winning the U.S. Star Trials is tougher than winning the Olympics. Maybe not anymore.

"The U.S. has lost some of its good sailors to pro sailing," Reynolds said. "There are opportunities now that didn't exist in '88. But if you look at the top guys in Europe, most of them are [subsidized] to sail Stars fulltime.

"I kind of do that because I sell sails, but when I'm in town I'm [in the office] from 8 till 5 or later making payroll, figuring how I'm gonna pay workers' comp in California and those kinds of things."

There are twists and ironies in the careers of Reynolds and Cayard. While the latter has never sailed in the Olympics, his public charisma played an important role in getting the Stars reinstated after '96 when the International Sailing Federation kicked them out to make room for more modern boats.

Reynolds, working with Cayard, Hal Haenel and other class leaders, said, "We came up with a lot of good arguments why keelboats and fleet racing [should be in the Olympics] and why the Star should be that boat, and Paul presented that at the 1997 spring meeting in Europe. From what I heard, his talk went over real well."

Later, Reynolds went on to win more Olympic medals and his second Star worlds with Haenel and then Magnus Liljedahl as crew. Cayard went back to America's Cups and the Whitbread race.

The same year Reynolds went to his first Olympics in '88, Cayard won his world title with Steve Erickson as crew.

Erickson is now Reynolds' crew. Erickson already has an Olympic gold medal, won as crew for Bill Buchan at Long Beach in '84. Reynolds' former crew, Liljedahl, and skipper Andy Lovell are Cayard's training partners.

Erickson and Cayard won together on other boats---notably, with Italy's Il Moro di Venezia, the top challenger in the '92 America's Cup at San Diego, and in the Whitbread in '96-97.

But somewhere in the English Channel on the final leg of the latter triumph, Erickson---whom Cayard affectionately referred to as "Stevie Wonder" in his e-mail reports from the boat---said he was leaving Cayard's struggling AmericaOne team to join Italy's Prada for the next Cup in New Zealand. Cayard felt a bit betrayed.

"It's water under the bridge," Cayard says now. "I still respect Stevie a lot for the good sailor that he is. I also remember the good results we had sailing together. It also was at a time when we were becoming who we are."

Cayard also has high respect for Reynolds---and scores to settle with both men from past U.S. Trials. Reynolds was still low on the radar in third place when Cayard had his best chance in '84. Buchan and Erickson beat him out by . . .

"Forty-four and three-quarters [points] to 44 and a half," Cayard said in a rueful 20-year flashback. "At the time I was very upset. I was 24 and you don't have everything in perspective. It seemed like the end of the world."

Reynolds slammed the door in the next four U.S. Trials although, he recalled, "It was pretty close with Cayard in '96."

Cayard remembers that one, too.

"It came down to the last day and any of the three of us could have won the regatta. [John] Kostecki and we went left and it was the wrong way to go and we tanked. Reynolds went right and won the Trials."

But Cayard did go to the '84 Olympics in L.A. as an alternate.

"You get suited up and march into the stadium with everybody, and that was pretty cool," he said. "But Buchan won the gold medal. All I could think of was if we had won the Trials, maybe that would have been me with the gold medal."