Wednesday, July 25, 2007

101.7

That was my body temperature yesterday morning when I woke up. I went immediately down to the medical unit on the first floor of our building and saw one of the dozens of doctors the USOC assigns to the games. The capability of the medical staff is incredible here. Anyway the doctor said I shouldn't work out yesterday...My resting heart rate was 93bps. Normal is under 50bps. There was a battle going on in my body. It felt like people were hitting me with laser boom sections on my legs back and arms. I had to tell him that I wasn't going to work out, we were in the middle of the competition. He said no way should I sail. I was able to make him understand the I had two teammates and that no crew substitutions were allowed. That perked him up a bit. I got antibiotics, Motrin in mass industrial doses and sudafed. Those of you who know me probably realize that sudafed and I are not good for eachother...too hyper! But I took it and I still wasn't hyper.

We got to the boat and it was really gray and windless and misting rain. Perfect environment in which to achieve maximum recovery. I piled on all my Molehill Mt. Equipment stuff over all the great Gill stuff we were given. I even put on my magic wool hat. Jody and David have been very supportive of me. They didn't even laugh too much at my get-up. We left the dock a little after noon and floated down to the course area. Lucky we have coach boats because we can get towed in and out. We're getting done just before dark, so we get towed in in the black sometimes. Lucky they'e stopped all commercial traffic in Rio harbour during the sailing. No worries about getting run over...except from two ferries that bisect bay just off the course. That will keep you from banging a corner too hard.

Anyway, it was a GREAT day for the American team. Bob and Eliza won both their races. Augie and Tracy won their race. Andrew was second in his race and is leading and our team squeeked over the line 3" in front of Canada to cross the line second. We ended up winning our race when we discovered that Chile had been OCS. Tito still has wheels nobody else has. Matt Burridge wheels. It was very helpful that he pushed the start too hard in the ebb tide and the current took him over the line. One more of these and we will be in business.

In the race, David faked Ecuador that we were going to start just to weather of then down at the leeward end. He ended up pulling ouf of it, sailing almost directly away from the line with 40 seconds to go (giving the current less of the boat to push over the line). Then he came back right under Juan Santos. He was VERY patient and crossed the line about a full second late, safely behind the line but right at the anchor line of the pin end boat. We went left which seemed to work yesterday. Everyone flopped to port and we sailed into the right third of the beat as a fleet. Tito crossed everyone from the right to round first. We rounded second. Down the run Canada flew past us. Those guys were much faster in all aspects of the sailing than the first day. Up the second beat things stayed about the same except that we were able to get past Canada and Brazil got close. We've been sending them ways they don't like to go...we've got to beat them. We gybe set at the top mark and sailed down the last leg to the right of the fleet. A few gybes and we forced Canada into a gybe right at the finish. Our kite just got across the line before theirs. You can let it out a little. So we're leading right now. Let's hope things continue like that.

Sorry for no pictures today.


Results - Top Three plus Top North American
Laser Radial (12 boats) – 1 race today/3 total
1. Canada 2-2-3: 7 (Lisa Ross)
T2. USA 4-1-9: 14 (Paige Railey)
T2. Argentina 3-4-7:14 (Cecilia Carranza Saroli)
T2. Bermuda 5-3-6: 14 (Katrina Williams)

Laser (12 boats) – 1 race today/ 3 total
1. USA 1-5-2: 8 (Andrew Campbell)
2. Argentina 7-1-1:9 (Julio Alsogaray)
3. Brazil 3-4-3: 10 (Robert Scheidt)

RS:X Men (9 boats) -- 2 races today/4 total
1. Mexico 1-1-1-1: 4 (David Mier Y Teran)
2. Brazil 3-2-3-1: 9 (Ricardo Winicki)
3. Argentina 2-3-2-5: 12 (Mariano Reutemann)

RS:X Women (7 boats) – 2 races today/3 total
1. Canada 1-1-1: 3 (Dominique Vallee)
2. Argentina 2-2-4: 8 (Florencia Gutierrez)
3. Brazil 4-3-2: 9 (Patricia Castro)

Lightning (7 boats) – 1 race today/3 total
1. USA 3-4-1: 8 (David Starck, Jody Starck, Bill Faude)
2. Brazil 2-3-4: 9 (Claudio Biekarck, Gunnar Ficker, Silva Marcelo)
T3. Chile 1-1-8(OCS): 10 (Alberto Gonzalez, Diego Gonzalez, Cristian Herman)
T3. Ecuador 5-2-3: 10 (Sebastian Herrera Castro, Juan Santos Dillon, Juan
Santos Garces)

Sunfish (11 boats) – 1 race today/3 total
1. Venezuela 3-1-2: 6 (Eduardo Cordero)
2. Peru 1-6-1: 8 (Alexander Zimmermann)
3. USA 2-5-3: 10 (Paul Foerster)

J24 (7 boats) – 1 race today/3 total
1. Argentina 1-2-4: 7 (Joaquin Duarte Argerich, Gustavo Gonzalez, Sebastian
Peri Brusa, Alejo Rigoni)
T2. Brazil 8-1-1: 10 (Carlos Jordao, Mauricio Oliveria, Daniel Santiago,
Alexandre Silva)
T2. Canada 3-4-3: 10 (Mark Goodyear, Rossi Milev, Erwyn Naidoo, Mike Wolfs)

Hobie Cat 16 (8 boats) -- 2 races today/4 total
1. Brazil 1-1-2-4: 8 (Bernardo Arndt, Bruno Oliveira)
2. USA 6-4-1-1: 12 (Bob Merrick, Eliza Cleveland)
3. Guatemala 3-2-6-2: 13 (Cristina Guirola, Juan Ignacio Maegli)

Snipe (11 boats) – 1 race today/3 total
1. Uruguay 2-2-2: 6 (Pablo Defazio, Eduardo Medici)
T2. Brazil 1-3-6: 10 (Pedro Amaral, Alexandre Paradeda)
T2. USA 5-4-1: 10 (Augie Diaz, Tracy Smith)

2 comments:

Doug said...

Big:
Way to suck it up and help make it happen. We are very proud of you and we are praying you get well fast. Hope the Sudafed doesn't show up as banned in a uranalysis...I'd hate to have a bro kicked out of the games at 46 for trying to get the edge that would make him perform like a 42 year old.

Michael Healy said...

Hang in there William.
We are all rooting and praying for you to get better quickly.

You are doing a great job chronicling "David, Jody, and Bill's, Big Adventure in Rio." We are very fortunate to have you 3 representing us in Rio.