Just as the phone signal went out — a phone signal that was reaching across a continent, across an ocean, through several time zones, all the way to where it’s already tomorrow, to Sydney, Australia — Graham Biehl was telling a story. He was talking about what he was learning from his girlfriend. How she was opening his eyes, and showing him how to sail for fun, how to sail with pure joy.
He’d already known this, of course. He’d been sailing since before he could walk, and so he’d always known it. But when you are traversing the globe, sailing competitively, full time — the way he and his Men’s 470 partner, Stu McNay, are — in pursuit of a medal at the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games, the fun of sailing can be easy to forget.
The phone signal might have gone out, but not his spirit.
And so, maybe this newfound, yet old, knowledge just might be the spark needed to spur Biehl and McNay to the medal podium in London. The two — a team since 2005, and Olympians in 2008 — were among several sailors who recently qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team via their results at the ISAF Sailing World Championships in Perth, Australia, which wrapped up Dec. 18.
US Sailing’s Olympic Sailing Committee officially will nominate them to the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team, pending approval from the U.S. Olympic Committee. Also qualifying for London are: Paige Railey and her brother, Zach, and Farrah Hall, who earned a nomination in the women’s windsurfer.
They are looking at peaking for London, but, Biehl said, “We’ve definitely still got a little bit of work to go.”
Biehl has been immersed in sailing almost since birth. He is a member of the San Diego Yacht Club. And growing up, he was surrounded by Olympians and America’s Cuppers. It was just part of the culture. It was just something he breathed in the sea air. The kids he grew up with, the kids he was a kid with, together they were the best youth sailors in the country for a stretch of three or four years.
“All of us really pushed each other all of the time,” he said.
And so he’s been traveling the world on the competitive circuit for about eight years now, he said. Most of competitive sailing is Eurocentric, so he’s always away from home. He knows every venue. The majority of his life these days is spent overseas. He’s like the stereotypical sailors of those old sea yarns, in port for a week or two or three at a time, then gone (though he puts his boat in a container, and gets there by plane).
Each stop, he said, is “like a temporary home.”
And so it could be easy to get caught up in the grind.
His girlfriend, Biehl said, is a very high-level sailor, too. But she wants nothing to do with the Olympic Games or any of that. She sails for other reasons. She sails for the fun of it, for the joy of it. This is what she is helping him see.
Which is good, because he has that inside of him, too.
In a 2008 interview with ussailing.org on making the Olympic team, Biehl said, “I like the freedom and the fun of it … and the peace of being on the ocean.” Now, he’s rediscovering that. Now, he’s feeling it again.
Biehl and McNay (on their website it’s officially Team McNay-Biehl) have done well. In 2011, they were second at the 470 North American Championships, the top North American team. They won Sail Melbourne. They’ve beaten the No. 1 team in the world. They placed 11th at the Weymouth & Perth International Regatta, the test event for the 2012 Games and they are currently ranked fifth in the world.
They’re still working out the kinks on their starts. There is lots of work to do, Biehl said. But they have the comfort of having worked together since 2005. They have a previous Olympic Games under their belts. And they have the confidence of having already qualified for London, of having been nominated to their country’s Olympic team. Now, they can just point to 2012, and point everything toward being in peak form then.
Now, maybe, they can think — just a little — about sailing for the fun of it, too. Now — just maybe — they’ll get to add a little joy, a little freedom, a little peace to the mix. And we’ll see if that’s the last spark they need to get to the medal stand.
Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Kalani Simpson is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.