Print
E-mail
Comment
Ogletree/Lovell duo end in last place in Olympic sailing
By CHUCK HLAVA
This wasn’t exactly the way Clear Lake Shores’ Charlie Ogletree and teammate John Lovell wanted to finish their Olympic sailing career.
The duo finished in 15th and last place in the Tornado sailing held in the Chinese port city of Qingdao, site of the Olympic sailing.
Spain’s Fernando Echavarri and Anton Paz took the gold. The silver medal went to Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby of Australia. Santiago Lange and Carlos Espinola of Argentina took the bronze.
Ogletree and Lovell never really got going in the 10 races. They never made it among the top 10 boats for the medal race.
Their race results were 14-12-7-11-12-14-15-15-14-15. This was their fourth Summer Olympics and their worst finish. In the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Ogletree and Lovell took the silver medal.
In his blog, Ogletree admitted that, “After three years of training here in China we embraced the almost universal belief that this would be a light air venue.
“The big negative is that we simply made the wrong choice in choosing to race with our light-air Chupacabra gennaker, based on a weather forecast that never happened.”
The duo had hopes of another medal, perhaps even the gold, but it was not to be even though at one point they sailed extremely well.
On Aug. 18 Ogletree states that, “Three races for the Tornado Class in moderate conditions today spelled the end of our Olympics dream of adding a Qingdao Gold Medal to our Athens Silver Medal.”
Further on Ogletree states that, “Today, with a strong current running up the course, we had very quick upwind legs and long downwind legs. The wind out of the west was very shifty and puffy, blowing between 8 and 15 knots. Conditions were difficult with lots of position flip-flops in the fleet.
“We sailed really, really well today, the best we have in this regatta but our sail choice worked against us. We were always making gains on the short upwind legs and even sometimes in the long hauls downwind. But the fact was that the small spinnaker killed us downwind.
“Today we learned over land over and over again, a lesson that we’ve already learned a million times: no two regattas are ever the same and it’s never like you think it’s going to be.”
The duo finished in 15th and last place in the Tornado sailing held in the Chinese port city of Qingdao, site of the Olympic sailing.
Spain’s Fernando Echavarri and Anton Paz took the gold. The silver medal went to Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby of Australia. Santiago Lange and Carlos Espinola of Argentina took the bronze.
Ogletree and Lovell never really got going in the 10 races. They never made it among the top 10 boats for the medal race.
Their race results were 14-12-7-11-12-14-15-15-14-15. This was their fourth Summer Olympics and their worst finish. In the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Ogletree and Lovell took the silver medal.
In his blog, Ogletree admitted that, “After three years of training here in China we embraced the almost universal belief that this would be a light air venue.
“The big negative is that we simply made the wrong choice in choosing to race with our light-air Chupacabra gennaker, based on a weather forecast that never happened.”
The duo had hopes of another medal, perhaps even the gold, but it was not to be even though at one point they sailed extremely well.
On Aug. 18 Ogletree states that, “Three races for the Tornado Class in moderate conditions today spelled the end of our Olympics dream of adding a Qingdao Gold Medal to our Athens Silver Medal.”
Further on Ogletree states that, “Today, with a strong current running up the course, we had very quick upwind legs and long downwind legs. The wind out of the west was very shifty and puffy, blowing between 8 and 15 knots. Conditions were difficult with lots of position flip-flops in the fleet.
“We sailed really, really well today, the best we have in this regatta but our sail choice worked against us. We were always making gains on the short upwind legs and even sometimes in the long hauls downwind. But the fact was that the small spinnaker killed us downwind.
“Today we learned over land over and over again, a lesson that we’ve already learned a million times: no two regattas are ever the same and it’s never like you think it’s going to be.”
Submit a Comment
|
You must be logged in to post a comment.
|
Not yet a registered member?
Click here to become one. Comments to stories and articles on the Web site are not edited or pre-approved before appearing online. Readers posting comments are solely responsible for those comments. Comments must be germane to the story to which they apply. Online comments that are libelous, profane or personally attack another site participant can be reported as abuse using the link provided on each comment. Comments reported as abusive will be reviewed and may be removed from view, as will off-topic comments. BE CIVIL. Individuals continually posting abusive comments to the site may have their registrations revoked. |
