long form
We all know that conventional TV will never be the go-to place for sailing vids, but the 3 minute highlight reels that we love so much are often just…unsatisfying. So here are a few longer pieces that just beg you to plug your trusty laptop into the 50” LCD hanging on the wall of your living room – even if you need to turn the volume off occasionally.
golden boys
Clean’s long-awaited 42-minute chat with Star Gold Medalist Freddy Lööf and coach Mark Ivey is a great one, and not just because these are two of the most genuine guys in the sport. Loof digs into what it means to be your country’s sole gold medalist in any sport and how you can spend 24 years of your life in single-minded pursuit of a goal, while Ivey goes into detail on the hows and whys of his crushing departure from the US Sailing Team, on the typical day in the life of a gold medal coach in Weymouth, on how he was treated by the King and Queen of Sweden, and just where he sees the US Sailing Team now and in the future. They also touch on the future of the Star boat and what both victorious sailors plan for the months to come.
the moth squad
This one may be a few months old, but the 2012 Aussie Moth Nationals were still the most recent big Moth regatta before this week’s Worlds in Campione, Italy. And given that 7 of the top 10 mothies in the world right now are Ozzies, you’re probably looking at most of the podium in this well-produced 25 minute show from Mornington, near Melbourne, back in May.
the full monty
This isn’t the kind of revelatory documentary from the 2012 VOR that we still hope to see at some point, but it is an hour and change summing up the entire saga of the closest Volvo Ocean Race in the decades-long history of the most famous ocean event in our sport. If you paid close attention to the event you’ll learn nothing new, and you’ll have to suffer through a bit of excessive narration by Martin the Brundlefish, though there’s enough never-before-seen 1080p stuff that is some of the most beautiful imagery we’ve ever seen of ocean racing.
cup choices
The America’s Cup World Series has become something of a borefest of late, the big cuts in both volume and quality of the on-line broadcasts and a constantly shifting event format making it tough to know what’s going on, and even tougher to care. But this week’s action in San Francisco might just have a cure for what ails the biggest show in sailing; already three boats have crashed and burned while training in San Francisco, and with summer temps in the mountains nice and juicy, we can expect more of the same on the breezy Bay. This 23 minute video re-introduces you to the teams that will be in action this week, and reminds us all that announcer Gary Jobson needed to hang up his microphone about 5 years ago.
