"Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose" John LeCarre
By now almost all of you are familiar with the controversy surrounding the women’s rs:x Olympic Trials. There have been accusations of excessive lawyering (heartily disputed by lawyers), lots of taking sides and a small amount (thankfully) of blaming. You all know the story, Nancy was winning, but got run into and her sail was torn, keeping her from her rightful finish that would win the trials….or wait, is it that Farrah made an amazing come back, the wind picked up just like it needed to, and she won the trials – only to have the prize snatched from her at the last minute from a US Sailing Jury that wanted Nancy to win from the get-go.
The truth – good luck figuring that out. But here’s my version of the truth, for what ever it’s worth.
Going into the last day, Nancy was winning the Olympic Trials by a slim margin. I went into the last race knowing that Nancy either had to beat Farrah in the last race or finish no more than two points behind her to win the regatta. I don’t imagine this was a mystery to either of them. Race 16 (infamous race 16) was started in marginal wind, similar to race 15. Nancy and Farrah both had decent starts near the boat on starboard while USA 71 started at the pin on port. Why did that sailor start on port at the pin? Good question – but the wind was oscillating and fairly gusty. A port start could have been the call – in a fleet of only six sailors how much can go wrong? However it happened, the port tack sailor managed to collide with Nancy (and Farrah, if my memory serves) and cause the now infamous gash/tear/slit in her sail.
Pretty quickly after the start the wind was building, I was thrilled to be fully powered up and making my around the course rapidly catching up to and passing the girls ahead of me. Farrah was way out in front, I pulled into second place by the second up wind mark with Lisa Kremer behind me and Nancy and the rest of the fleet behind her. As I crossed the finish line I was totally stoked to have another second place finish for the regatta and I felt awful for Nancy.
When we hit land, Nancy was understandably distraught and Farrah (when she realized what the scores meant) was elated. My heart broke for Nancy – I’ve been lucky enough to get to know her over the last couple years, and there aren’t words to describe how much I admire her tenacity and spirit. I’ve even been lucky enough to call her a friend. As a friend, I wanted her to win more than anything (except of course, a miracle come back of my own). But when Nancy got redress from the jury and Farrah ended up second, my heart broke for her. She sailed a hell of a regatta, and one amazing last race. To watch her have her Olympic berth snatched away from her, moments before the awards ceremony, after seeing how much she had improved over the last few months before the trials- well, you watch that up close and in person and tell me how you feel about it.
I drove back home to Denver from southern California counting my lucky stars that I sailed a rotten regatta and wasn’t involved and that I had a job and life waiting for me at home.
Fast forward six months, and I’m being asked to appear in person, at a law office in Rhode Island for the re-hearing of Nancy’s redress and the possible hearing for Farrah’s redress. I could have said no – I could have stayed totally uninvolved. So what was I doing in Providence? I felt is was important that the issue be resolved in the best possible way – and that way kind of needed to include all of us who were there and as much information as could be given to the folks who were going to make the decisions. I also felt like it was important to be there for both Farrah and Nancy. We’re all pretty close for competitors – and if I were in their shoes I wouldn’t want to go through that without friends around.
The first set of hearings was essentially a do-over of Nancy’s redress from the Trials and then an opportunity for Farrah to get a redress hearing of her own. At the end of two long days (during which a few of us witnesses felt like we were being a little unnecessarily harassed by a US Sailing lawyer) the US Sailing jury stood by their original decision –which gave Nancy Rios the win.
Farrah took the case to the final step, which was an arbitration hearing that was held in Rhode Island about a month and a half after the first round of hearings. As witnesses, Lisa Kremer and I were not super excited to have a repeat of our first experience where we were so out of our element and feeling so harassed by the process and the lawyering that we wanted to hide in the corner and cry. Luckily, the process with the arbitrator was much more civilized and brief. Unfortunately for Lisa – she had appendicitis and got to spend a lovely day at a Providence hospital having her appendix removed.
I was only directly involved in a very brief portion of the arbitration when I was questioned. So my overall impressions should be taken as purely my opinion, based on only a very secondary hearing of partial facts. But at the end of the day – the arbitrator dismissed the case because there was not enough reason for him to overturn the decision, but he did feel as though Farrah did get a bit of the short end of the stick at the trials. So… there you go – I am so proud of Nancy and happy for her to be going to the Olympics. I know she is going to be training and working so hard to be the best she can possibly be at the Olympics – both as a windsurfing competitor and an American. And I am so proud of Farrah for fighting for what she thinks is right and for the amazing strides she has made in her windsurfing and racing in a short amount of time with limited funds. I’m not sure you can call either one of them a clear winner – but certainly neither is a loser.
