Follow Hugh Freund in his Olympic Quest
HYC yacht club members, Dan and Julie Freund have shared great news about their son Hugh, We will continue to post information as it happens so come back often to check on Hugh’s quest to become an Olympian. Please read the latest Update below sent by Hugh and check out the Press Release and regatta results at the links below (Sonar fleet) Great job Hugh and Team!
Update 8/12 – 6th in Weymouth, 4th in World Cup
Our last two days of racing were certainly our best. If it were not for losing a protest to the Germany 11 in the 7th race we would have scored a second which would have secured us a 5th overall.
Going into the last two races knowing we wouldn’t be able to crack the top five may have actually lifted a little pressure off because we sailed our two best races of the series. The breeze was all over the place in velocity and direction meaning that high risk leverage could either pay off huge or send a team to the back of the fleet. In the first race of the day we were toward the back of the fleet and decided to leverage toward the left under a huge cloud where it looked like there was better pressure. What we got was solid pressure and a nice righty that we rode up to top left corner of the beat. We tacked and crossed the entire fleet except Israel. In one beat we had rumbled past five boats into second! The Norwegians slipped by us in a puff just before the finish downwind, so we took third.
The last race was even more wild than the first with a 100˚ shift in under ten minuted before the start. The wind settled down to a 40˚ oscillation for the race with puffs to 11 punctuating large flat spots in the breeze. We finished 4th.
Both races were tracked using GPS, and can be replayed here: http://www.skandiasailforgoldregatta.co.uk/news/_985/live_tracking
We finished 4th in the ISAF World Cup this year. Because we were unable to compete in the Semaine Olympique Francaise in Hyeres, France back in April because of the volcanic eruption we did not accumulate as many points as we could have. We tied the German team on points, but edged them out with a higher overall finish from Miami OCR.
Dear Family and Friends,
About a year and a half ago I had an opportunity to sail a Sonar in a disabled/open regatta with 2008 paralympian Rick Doerr. I had not done much sailing in the recent few years and promptly broke the pole just minutes before the start of our first race. Basically I was rubbish, or very nearly. Despite that Rick asked me to come sail with him again in Miami in January 2009. We finished 3rd overall, which was good enough to qualify us for the 2009 US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics. Since then we joined with Brad Kendell to form our three person Paralympic campaign fo the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. It has been enormously good fun and I’ve learned loads from some of the worlds best Olympic and Paralympic sailors.
The big events for 2010 have all been sailed, except for our qualifier in December. In 2011 we will be ramping up our campaign, training more often and competing in more events regionally, nationally and internationally. We finished 4th overall in the ISAF World Cup this year and will look to crack into the top three next year.
I’m very excited about this campaign and I would love for folks to follow along with us. To that end we now have a website: www.teamusa674.com. If the social network is more your scene you can become a fan of Team USA 674 and follow along there. Sorry to those of you who are Twitteratti, we don’t Tweet updates. You can however follow the entire US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics at http://twitter.com/USSTAG. The entire team sailing page is: http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/.
If you would like to contact me just use my normal email address: hugh.freund@gmail.com. If you would like to contact our team, send an email to info@teamusa674.com. We would love to hear from you!
Cheers!
Hugh
http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/Teams/Athlete_Bios/Hugh_Freund.htm
Past Race Links:
http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/News/USSTAG_Wins_Two_Gold_Medals_at_Sail_for_Gold.htm
http://www.sailracer.co.uk/events/18401/results.htm
You can follow Hugh in the future through the links below:
http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/Multimedia/Sail_for_Gold_Photo_Gallery.htm
http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/Home.htm
