470 Olympic Report: US

TEAM HEADS TO EUROPE, FINISHES TRAINING IN SAN DIEGO

Hello form Detroit,

Yes, Detroit. We are on a layover before catching a flight to Europe and a busy Spring season in Europe. Up first is the Barcelona Olympic Sailing Week, followed by the Princess Sofia Trophy in Palma, and then Semaine Olympique in Hyeres, France. We'll wrap up this segment in Europe by representing the top Men's team spot at the ISAF World Games in Neusiedl, Austria. For sure, these next seven weeks will be exciting, long, full of challenges, and a great chance for us to test our racing as a team!

Our first job once we get to Barcelona is to pick up our van, have a good dinner, and get some rest. We'll spend Saturday and Sunday organizing ourselves for the week, and most of the day on Monday unloading the container. If all goes well, we'll get out on the water for practice on Tuesday.

To recap previous updates, we spent the month of January and some of February in Miami. There we sailed the 470 North American Championships and the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Both were ISAF-graded events, completed the 2006 US SAILING TEAM rankings, and were qualifiers for the World Games and Olympic Test Event (in China this coming August). We finished 2nd and 4th respectively and were the top Americans in both events. We were quite happy with these finishes in a fleet dense with foreign talent. Nonetheless, the regattas gave us the top spots on the US Team, World Games, and Test Event. The results also launched us to 19th in the World rankings. Good stuff!

Back in San Diego we've been busy with campaign organization, presentations, boat work, and so forth. It's a full-time job. The No. 1 US Women's team -- Amanda Clark and Sarah Mergenthaler -- came to San Diego for two-weeks of training. The camp was very productive on many levels. We focused on boat-handling, in-boat communication, starts, downwind technique, and crewing. Also, we took a tour of the Olympic Trials venue in Long Beach and worked on sail testing. Afterwards, we flew to Miami for Miami Race Week. Mikee raced Mumm 30s and Dave raced Melges 24s. Busy...busy!

Special thanks to Brian Camet, Alex Camet, Jane Rowe, Julie Michels, Kim Kruger, and Marissa Parks for all their help with video taping. Stay tuned for an edited piece available on our website.

Thank you to the gang at North Sails, particularly Vince Brun, Steve Pickle, Chris Snow, Andy Stagg, Chad Hough, Trick Murry, and, of course...Bobby!

Special thanks to Brenda Martin and Billy Clark at Bank of America. Thank you to Tom Carruthers, Whit Batchelor, and JWorld San Diego for lending their coach boat. Thank you to Jay and Pease Glaser. Thank you to Bill Shore, Mark Ewing, Justin Smith, Chuck Brown, Sarah Callahan, and Deneen Demourkas. Thank you to Ray Pope, Jen McCoy, and Rocco at Rigworks, Inc in San Diego.

Thanks to Orbitz.com for providing flights to Europe, to Matt Porter and the team at Kokatat Watersports Wear, to Darren and Steve Rosenberg at Kaenon Polarized for all their continued support for our vision, Steve 'Haro' Harrison for his welding expertise, Cameron Roy at Auto Europe for setting up the Euro-van for the upcoming trip, and McLube for providing ample product!

Lastly, a huge thanks to coaches Skip Whyte and Morgan Reeser.

We'll be in touch from Spain!

Stay tuned,
Mikee Anderson-Mitterling & David Hughes
Team USA 1734
http://www.teamusa1734.org

Look for more reports from the Number One and Two ranked US Mens 470 teams, and the Number One ranked US Womens 470 team, by clicking here.