Its been 1 month since we arrived at out training base in LA.
We sailed 16 races in the Olympic Trials and it’s official were heading to the OLYMPICS!!!
We did it, we won the Olympic Trials!!! I told you guys from day one to Believe and I was true to my words
and beliefs…..

I gotta be honest, it wasn’t easy, but what an unbelievable feeling to have reached a goal, knowing how much hard work we put into this! Truly Amazing…..

I am still in shock and in the beginning stages of planning the next year year…. Its not easy, I have zero energy and I am hung over….

Wow.. I am emotionally and physically drained… I am spent…

How we won it:

Last race of the series, we were 1 point behind George Szabo and 4 points ahead of Mark Mendleblatt. To win we had to have a boat in between us and Szabo and not be behind Mendleblatt by more than 3 boats…. Sounds easy right….
We had the best start, it was the best start of the whole week…. We nailed it at the boat end, man JD had that boat screaming up the first beat. After the start we had the entire fleet to leeward (we were looking at them in our main window, for people who don’t know what this means it means we were ahead by a lot)) Andy Horton was the only boat? that made it around the top mark ahead of us… We rounded the weather mark 2nd, with Szabo and Mendleblatt Deep… Cant let up now.. press on, put the gas pedal down GO GO GO… On the first downwind run the position’s remained the same we rounded the leeward gate in second and we opted to round the left hand mark (looking downwind) Rick Merriman/Phil Trinter rounded the right mark and managed to pass both Horton and US half way up the next beat… We were calm and waited for the right moment to attack.. (all the while Szabo is passing boats.). things were getting tense…. So Top of the last beat we got a little left shift and passed Horton to round second right on the transom of Merriman… Down the last run things were going smoothly we had good speed, and with 100 yards to go we took the lead and won the RACE!!!? And in the process earned our ticket to China…..!!!!!!!!

HUGE HUGE HUGE…. I am pumped… What I am most pleased about is how we came together as a team and unit over the last month, we clicked when we needed to, we broke the spirits of all the other competitors….? I am out of words, I am physically unable to type my feelings and emotions because there are no words to describe how I am feeling…..

We are now Olympians, and no one can ever take this away!!!

Fist goal -DONE
Gold Medal- Next step….?

With the right amount of work, training, dedication and luck… Its all possible….
Believe!

Austin

Here we are 11 races down, 5 to go… 3 more days of sailing…..

We are in third place 6 points back of first place. We have 42 points, the 1st and 2nd place boats have 36 points and are tied…..
Its all happening….. To say things are getting tense around here is an understatement..

The 4th place boat is 13 points behind us…

The mood is good at the team house and we are all pretty relaxed, very loose…. Its more like a family with the coaches and me, constant trash talking amongst the 4 of us… Its getting really brutal….. Our conversations go something like this… Hey Pickel do you know what I like about you?, Nothing…. Pretty juvenile, but nonetheless very entertaining….

My wife arrived yesterday so we have tried to tone done our language somewhat, but its hard after I am around my buddies for months at a time…. Sally is reminding me that I must leave the toilet seat down…... It seems I have a lot of people around here telling me what to do???? All good…

Two races today, two great finishes…
We went into today in 4th place 13 points off the lead, we finished the day with race scores of 2nd and 3rd… Huge day.. George Szabo/Andrew Scott had two bullets and Mark Mendleblatt/Magnus Lilijedahl had a 10,4….

The first race saw JD and I battling around the course and crossing the line in second, just barely ahead of Johnny Mac who finished 3rd… We had a great start and headed out to the right, we were able to come back to the middle on a nice right shift while the guys who played the left had less pressure and not such a god angle… It was very light so the downwind legs seemed long and henious….... Boats getting lots of leverage and trying to cover everybody just isnt possible, staying calm and sailing fast is easier said than done…..

Race two, we had an ok start at the boat end but were about 5 seconds late, we were however able to tack and cross the boats on our hip. Out to the right side again, pressure looked good,... Again it paid… We got around the top mark in 3rd, we managed to hang on around the race course to finish 3rd, We were in second down the final run, but I made the call to gybe and cover the fleet and looking back we should of crossed them, this error cost us 1 place… Every point matters….. Cant let this happen again….

The final 3 days will be interesting, to say the least… Teams are getting nervous…. Just waiting till they get out of our way….

We have been in this position before, were ready to win!

Believe

a lot of you ask me if its cool for you to send this to our friends… All good send it to whomever you want.

Austin Sperry

Today was a very long day on the water…
We docked off at 10:15 am in no breeze so we towed out to the race course with the sails down…

Once out on the water we sat around for a while with no wind, JD got on the chase boat to go take some current readings with the coaches and weather team.
The breeze came up about an hour after we arrived to the course, but was too shifty to start a race. We sailed around taking wind readings for a few hours, finally they started a race. Course W2 which means two laps finish downwind.
Well halfway up the first beat there was a 50 degree shift to the right….. what this means to non sailors is as follows… Your sailing along after the start burning boats off around you forcing them the wrong way and all of a sudden you look over your shoulder and they are now ahead of you by 500 yards….. When this happens it is not cause they are going faster than you but a big shift was the cause, and the race was called off.. The race committee made a good call, it wasn’t a fair contest….

We had another start, the pin was hugely favored, the boats who hit the pin and tacked onto port were ahead by 100 yards immediately, but this time we had a general recall (meaning boats were over the starting line early)

Start #3
Its now about 3pm and we got a race started.
JD and I started at the pin, it was favored by 10 degrees, after the start I looked over my shoulder and informed JD we should tack because we could cross the fleet by a mile… This is what we did and we crossed the fleet.
1/2 up the first beat things were looking good…. We had good pressure and the current regatta leader was to leeward of us, one option… continue on.
3 boats that had bad starts banged the left corner and wouldn’t you know it they had pressure and angle on us… this is where it gets good.


Well JD waited on a header (just so happened to be on the starboard layline, for a racing fans out there you should avoid at all costs the laylines, your options run out real quick) Well we tack onto starboard and here comes the pack of 3 boats, 1st boat was Eric and Mike they tacked to leeward of us they didn’t tack on us but made it difficult to hang, boat number two was Szabo & Scott well they lee bowed JD and I, this was the best part JD and I rolled them and forced them to tack and go behind us, and the last boat from that pack was Joe Londigrin and Mark Strube they were very cool they had a chance to tack on our face but opted to cross us, by the top mark we got a right hand shift and we rounded second…. Eric & Mike & JD/I extended on the run. Up the next beat we managed to pass Eric and Mike to take the lead and never looked back.
We won the race by over a minute….

We are in Second place overall, and picked up a few points on the leader today…. We right there…. Keep believing people!!!
Some people ask what the days are like here… Ground hog day every day..

7am Wake up
715am on bike for ride by myself with my ipod to think about the day and the job I need to do.
8am yacht club weigh in (during this time the team is launching the boat and doing and repairs that need to be made we have a German here so things are looking good)
815 bike back to house for breakfast, shower, internet
945 team meeting at YC to go over game plan, weather any thoughts etc
10:15am dock off on water
5pm return to harbor haul out wash boat
5:30 pm dinner
6pm stretch
6:30 message therapist
relax
10pm bed….

pretty militant if you ask me…..

Again I have to say we have the BEST team here period….. We are the most prepared team, we have put the most time in,,, We have the best coaches! I am confident this will pay off…. oh and were not slow….

Some other teams are starting to crack.

Its still a long way to go…. but were heading in the right direction…

go, go, go…... Believe

Austin

We have had 5 races up to this point, and things are going very well…

Saturday dawned beautiful weather, and decent breeze, enough so that the race committee decided to hold 3 races in one afternoon. (I think they were nervous about the possibility of no wind later in the series and wanted to get in an extra race…

Race one-
JD and I had a nice start at the pin end with one boat to leeward of us.. We had good speed up the first beat and rounded the top mark in second behind George Szabo… On the run we passed szabo and never looked back we won the first race of the Olympic Trials, nice way to start a very very long week…

Race two-
This race was all over the map places changed back and fourth top to bottom, at end of the race we finished 10th… not ideal but not henious either…

Race three-
We did a bit better in these trying conditions and finished 6th..

After day one we were in 4th place overall just points off the lead….

Day Two Sunday:

Race one
We didn’t have such a good start but we managed to round the weather mark in second place just behind andy macdonald. Down the first run, we got around Andy Macdonald and were in first place by the leeward mark. Up the next beat we had all the boys to leeward that we need to put points on. However we let Andy Horton get to the left of us, he gained some leverage and with his luck a huge left hand shift come in and he was now in first, the finish order stayed this way. We finished the race in 2nd.. Again great start to the day.

Race two
Action is getting tight around here… It seemed that all 19 boats arrived at the weather mark at the same time, there was a time where it seemed that we would round the weather mark in the teens, but we were calm hit the last two shifts, didn’t overstand the layline and managed to round the weather mark in 5th.. Great seeing how it was looking five minutes before we got there. The breeze went to crap and the guys in Last place around the top mark gybe set and carried the pressure all the way down on port gybe, wouldn’t you know it they got a lefty at the bottom to make things even worse…... we had a fair bit of work to do up the next beat and the last run to the finish… Up the next beat was just henious, no wind, HUGE chop from all the spectator boats, and mark Reynolds on your leebow pinching in his high mode all while were sailing a huge port tack lefty….. Cant tack gotta hold here…... The guys to leeward had more pressure are were able to cross us by a few lengths.. By the top of the next mark we were in 6th, down the final run we gybed a bit to late and again the guys who gybed sooner made gains as the pressure dropped on the right hand side of the run…. We lost 2 boats at the end of run to finish the race in 8th..

In big regattas like this every point matters, yesterday we gave up 3 points…. I hope it doesn’t come back to haunt us.

Were still in 4th place, just 3 points out of second and 9 points out of 1st… Long way to go 11 races left 6 days of sailing… were in the hunt and were ready to win this thing!
Believe People

Its been 3 years since I began sailing with John Dane. We have had some amazing victories, some humbling defeats, and felt every other emotion along the way. Were number 1 on the 2007 US Sailing Team, Top ten ranked team in the world. We have been around the world and back again 4 times….

It means nothing….

Over the next week and 16 races, all that matters is consistency and winning the Olympic Trials… 19 Boats 16 races, 1 discard = winner goes to the olympics….. pretty simple….

We have been in Los Angeles since Sept 17th training with Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada, as I said in previous updates from China, Robert is a 9 time laser world champion, 2 time gold medalist and 1 silver medal… He just won the star world championships, and won the gold at the Pre-Olympics… Needless to say we had a great training session with Robert & Bruno… We were able to help those guys improve their upwind performance and they took our downwind skills up to the next level…

I am a big believer in training with people/teams that are better than you, I feel that if you train with better teams you will get your game on that next level…. The biggest mistake is sailing with people that are off the pace, or working with people who just don’t get it for that matter…... Lots of wasted time etc…. not very productive…

Some numbers that I have been calculating: we have
4 star boats here
2 tenders here
1 team house for past 6 months
weather team
strength coach/trainer
massage therapist
3 coaches (Hans Wallen 96’ Silver medalist from Sweden, Marc Pickel from Germany and Rod Hagebols from Australia)
we have ridden over 200 miles on our bikes just warming up (the past 15 days)
we have spent about 30 hours in the gym
an average of 4 hours of on the water tuning, testing, practice racing daily
After hours debrief, more meetings, more sail testing, more meetings to schedule meetings…..
coaches sleeping on the couch because the other coach snores..
tested 15 masts
tested 4 booms
gone through 2 boxes of paper for printing our weather reports, mast pictures, side bend, fore aft bend, every type of picture or video you can think of we have done it…
more stretching, dog calls, elevated mountain climbers, swiss ball crunches, & wall sits…. those suck.. gone through more bottles of sun tan lotion than wal mart wanted to sell us..
had some seriously long days, and some serious gut checks, some long looks in the mirror
1 trip to the hospital, 1 trip to the orthopedic surgeon
More days living out of a suitcase, sitting on airplanes and away from home that I care to remember…


As I type this email I am reflecting on the past few years and how lucky I am to be in this position. We are the most prepared team here. We have won the big events, we have proven to ourselves that this is possible. Our expectations are high, they should be, If you want to be the best and make the Olympic Team you need to peak at the right time…. The time is now. Nothing else matters, I am totally focused and totally committed to winning this thing…
Its not going to be easy, every inch, every point matters…. My one word, one belief for this regatta is BELIEVE…...

You look around the boat park, people are bunched and nervous…. You can see it on peoples faces and their actions… Some people flat out tell me that they don’t think they have a chance? I ask myself what are you doing here?

I am trying to un-clutter my mind and relax, but bottom line is I am ready to get in that boat do my job to the best of my ability give it 100% every second…. The rest will take care of itself.

This regatta is so much bigger than just the two of us in the boat, its the guys back at the shipyards in Mississippi that work day in and day out who constantly get bothered by me after their long day is finished so they can build a custom piece for one of the boats, for the workers at the City of Gulfport who cheer and support us, for our families who never see us, my wife sally deserves this much more than I do…. These goals are not possible without the support of a great team…. We have the BEST TEAM!

Here is an email I got from a friend back home… I think it’s very inspiring….

Hope you are doing okay. Think of you and all your dreams ….keep dreaming and keep going! You are so special, find that inner balance needed for the long haul, b/c I think you shall have a long, good life. I am praying for the trials and no matter what happens in the next week or so, get this in your head: You have already and will continue to accomplish more than 99% of your peers. Jealousy is an ugly thing and Brother, you are a lightening rod for folks to exercise that emotion on. Shrug it off ….Don’t internalize the negative words or deeds done to you. While you did not need this email to tell you any of this, I needed to tell you these things for myself and also to remind you that plenty around you pull for you to achieve all your goals!! You are loved and blessings are spoken over you. Go, go, go toward your destiny of greatness and bigness, and goodness, but remember to remain your precious humble self, you are but dust….even Alexander had to succumb to his grave. Leave a full and balanced legacy.

Whatever happens after this next week, I can sleep at night knowing that I have left no stone unturned….


BELIEVE!!!

Austin