Sailing to success

Erin Maxwell and Isabelle Kinsolving probably have the busiest lives of any women competing in the 470 sailing class. Yet even with limited practice and even more limited competition, the duo from the Northeast continues to be among the world's best.

Maxwell, the helmsman, and Kinsolving took the bronze medal at the Delta Lloyd Regatta, the fifth event of the ISAF World Sailing World Cup in the Netherlands, on May 31, a Sunday.

They didn't get to spend much time in Europe to celebrate.

"We got back on Monday," Kinsolving said. "Literally, Erin and I landed I think at 10:15 and were out of the airport by 11:30. She was driving straight to work, and I was driving to my summer internship."
Maxwell is a full-time commodities trader in Connecticut, while Kinsolving, a law student at New York University, had just started her summer of interning with a federal judge in New York City.

The timing of the Delta Lloyd Regatta worked out for both of them. With one of the preparation days being Memorial Day, Maxwell only had to use four days of vacation. It worked even better for Kinsolving, who was in between final exams from her first year of law school and the start of her internship at the time.

But their hectic lifestyles aren't the norm for Olympic-level sailors and makes for some interesting schedule juggling when it comes to plotting their regattas and training.

"I personally don't know anybody else who sails at the top level who also works five days a week in a full-time job," Maxwell said. "We probably do the least amount of training out of any other team in the world. Honestly, a lot of them probably sail full time."

With five full days in the office each week, the teammates find time to work on physical conditioning in the evenings and then try to meet up on weekends to actually practice on a boat. With limited time off, the 2008 world champions also have to cut back on how many regattas they sail in this summer.

They plan to train three weekends in July and hopefully, a couple of weekends in August. Their next competition is a small regatta in Connecticut the first week in August, and beyond that, the only other competition they are competing in is the 470 World Championships from August 20-29 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Finding time to train the rest of the summer requires the team to be a little more creative.

They won't be sailing much in June because Kinsolving and her fiancé, Jonathan, are getting married on June 20 before heading out on a sailboat for their honeymoon.

The tight schedule might not allow Kinsolving and Maxwell to train and compete as much as some of their competitors, but since it is the year after the Olympics, this season is probably the least intense of the four-year cycle. The unique schedule also helps them maximize the time they actually do have training together.

"For us the challenge is to really focus on quality instead of quantity and really maximize the training and racing that we do have," Kinsolving said. "I think having less of it and trying to maintain other professional lives helps us really focus on our sailing and really put everything in perspective, because for us, our training and competition is our vacation time, so you don't want to be wasting that, you don't want to be doing something that's not fun."

Maxwell said each sailor's combined experience is what really allows the team to succeed with the limited practice time.

"It would be entirely impossible for us to do this if we were still in the early stages of the boat and competition," she said. "We rely on our experience and the many years that we have been sailing in the class to give us an edge. Some of they younger teams, even though they are training every day and are probably in much better shape, we understand the boat a lot better then some of the less-experienced teams."

That experience comes from a combined 45 years of sailing, many of which were against each other.

 Maxwell, 30, began sailing when she was 6 and racing when she was 9. Kinsolving, 29, began taking sailing lessons at 8. Although Kinsolving grew up in New York and Maxwell grew up in Stonington, Conn., they were acquaintances while racing against each other growing up.

Their competitions continued in college as Maxwell sailed for Dartmouth and Kinsolving for Yale. Maxwell finished third at nationals in 2004, missing a shot at competing in the 2004 Olympics. Kinsolving represented the United States in the 2004 Olympics and placed fifth in Athens.

They both began sailing 470 independently in their 20s and decided to become teammates in July, 2006. Two years later, in 2008, they became world champions.

"I think the perspective of having been competitors allowed us to become a strong team because it provided a really healthy way of analyzing each other's faults without being negative," Kinsolving said. "Having competed against each other for literally 18 years, you know what your competitors' weaknesses are. But you also know what their strengths are."

That compatibility, on and off the boat, has been vital to their success, Maxwell said.

"I think that we have an extremely good team dynamic and a really good sense of balance and sharing and of equal responsibility when we are racing," Maxwell said. "I think that's really rare, and I think that is one of the reason that we are so successful. I think we are able to channel our skill sets better than most other teams."

Outside of sailing, Kinsolving and Maxwell live a little more than an hour away from each other but are still able to get together socially. They have grown close enough to each include the other as a bridesmaid in their weddings-Maxwell was married last September.

The long-term goal is to get to the 2012 London Olympics. But for right now they are just living in the moment and making the best out of their limited training.

When asked how balancing life, training, and work as 2012 nears, Kinsolving just laughs.

"We're not sure yet!" she said. "Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and we'll see."

 

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Chrös McDougall is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.