Daniel Forster
On June 21, 1976, there was a report buried deep on web page 54 of The New York Occasions; the outcomes of the US Olympic Crusing Trials. The standings within the three-man Soling keelboat competitors might need come as a shock to some; the winner was a 25-year-old Texan by the title of John Kolius, along with his crew, Walter Glasgow and Richard Hoepfner. That they had overwhelmed (amongst others) Robbie Haines (with Lowell North aboard), Buddy Melges, Dave Curtis and Invoice Buchan.
Kolius recollects the expertise 44 years later: “The day after the trials, Melges mentioned, ‘Come to Zenda, Wisconsin—let’s get you actually going quick.’ That’s the way it was. I used to be so fortunate with mentors, so fortunate. I beat this man at his personal sport—barely within the final race—and the subsequent day he says, ‘Come to Zenda… How’s that?’ That’s superior!”
Many of the high Soling sailors had a number of years on Kolius (the youthful Robbie Haines being the exception), and given the age hole and their stellar reputations, it will have been straightforward to have been over-awed.
“It’s half self-confidence, it’s half vanity, and it was half naivete as a result of I was too younger to be scared,” Kolius says.
There have been no thoughts video games?
“If there have been, I used to be too silly to determine it out,” he says. “I used to be simply racing sailboats. I actually was quick and actually may get probably the most out of a ship.”
The boatspeed was sufficient for a silver medal in a desperately tight Olympic regatta, with lower than a degree between the highest three boats on the end. Kolius had come a good distance in a short while, however none of it will have occurred if his two older sisters hadn’t tried crusing at a Lady Scouts camp.
“I’m pondering my father will need to have had a nasty day on the golf course,” Kolius says. “Swiftly, he simply determined to take up a special sport. As quickly as they completed that camp, my dad mentioned this appears to be like like an awesome factor for the household and purchased an O’Day Day Sailer. And that’s sort of how all of us began collectively. And I actually took to it. I simply beloved it.”
The household joined the Houston YC, and after a yr of crusing the Day Sailer, Kolius’ mother and father purchased him a Sunfish to begin racing. He had the sort of crusing schooling that doesn’t occur a lot in lately of junior fleets and intensive teaching.
“I used to be a yacht-club rat. I’d hang around on the membership, and if anyone was going crusing and we weren’t, I used to be begging for a trip. And there have been quite a lot of great individuals.”
He crewed on all the things he may and raced Sunfish in blended fleets of juniors and adults. “So, you had been getting your butt kicked by grown-ups from the get-go. You bought your coaching via the adults that determined to take you below their wing.”
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Success got here early within the native lessons, and with the help of his mother and father, Kolius entered the Sears Cup and certified for the finals in San Francisco Bay. Racing with Jay and Dan Williams, the workforce didn’t have a great first day; they struggled to deal with the present, hit a mark in a single race, and had been lifeless final within the different—at which level, his father intervened. “He simply got here down on us that evening and mentioned: ‘You guys want to begin actually crusing or we’re going to go residence. I’m not going to take a seat right here and have to observe this.’”
The boys took it on board, and the subsequent day it blew exhausting. “It was good for our expertise, the place we got here from,” Kolius says. They walked out winners.
Kolius went on to win the Mallory Cup in 1971 after which rapidly moved into the Olympic Soling class, coming ninth on the Olympic trials a yr later. On the way in which residence, Kolius and his crew made a dedication to do it correctly for 1976. “We educated 5 days per week, mainly out of the yacht membership, for the final two years earlier than the trials.”
After Olympic silver, Kolius stored up the momentum on to the most important stage of all: the America’s Cup: “I instantly went into the sailmaking business. I’d already dabbled. I labored for Buddy [Melges] for a season. I labored for Hans Fogh in Toronto for a season.”
Kolius then began the primary of his companies—an Ulmer Sails franchise, finally changing into a companion earlier than leaving—and gained the J/24 World Championship in 1979 and 1981.
The J/24, he says, was a stepping stone to larger boats, which then led to among the first IOR 50-footers, and from there to the most important present of all. It was 1983, and Dennis Conner and Tom Blackaller had been locked in a battle to win the New York YC’s America’s Cup protection trials. Blackaller had constructed a brand new boat and was crusing it in Newport in opposition to the two-time Cup winner Brave, utilizing the previous boat as a trial horse.
“Blackaller felt like Brave wasn’t pushing him exhausting sufficient, and he invited me to come back up and do the mainsheet for starters. I used to be doing the mainsheet, and the gentleman that was steering the Brave obtained sick. And so, they put me on the helm, and he put [Paul] Cayard on the mainsheet, over from his boat. And mainly, for per week we kicked Tom’s ass. And as soon as once more, I used to be simply too younger, too silly to know that I wasn’t alleged to be there.”
When this system moved to California for winter coaching, Kolius was made skipper of Brave. He obtained to decide on a few of his crew, and the boat was promoted from trial horse to stablemate. “I obtained to deliver John Bertrand with me,” he says. “John and I, we sailed a complete lot collectively. It was quite a lot of enjoyable. He’s as calm as I’m uncalm.”
After which they had been again in Newport for a Cup summer time that may most likely by no means be surpassed.
“We shocked lots of people. We did quite a lot of work to that boat, the boys. We longboarded the Brave. The entire workforce obtained up there within the wintertime, however that made us even nearer collectively. We overachieved, there’s no query of that.”
The overachievement attracted quite a lot of consideration, significantly within the gentle of Conner’s failure to carry onto the Cup. Kolius was appointed skipper of America II, the New York YC’s challenger in Fremantle, Australia, in 1987. After a superb begin within the first two spherical robins, the boat missed the lower for the semifinals by a degree, after a desperately slender defeat to New Zealand.
“It was horrible; it was a really, very quiet tow-in,” Kolius says. “I didn’t obtain what I wished to do within the America’s Cup ultimately. It appeared like I had a really troublesome time managing the fundraising and the crusing. We had actually good groups. We had actually good sails. We weren’t ever very quick. We simply couldn’t get the precise platform regardless of how exhausting we tried. Sadly, the America’s Cup is just about all in regards to the platform ultimately. And I obtained no person accountable however myself; it simply didn’t work out. We had a complete bunch of individuals give us a complete bunch of cash, and we didn’t win. So, it was not a great expertise.”
Whereas it was a setback, the 1988 Deed of Reward match and extended subsequent courtroom motion gave Kolius a possibility to renew his crusing profession outdoors the Cup. Throughout this era, his title was not often out of the crusing magazines. He gained the Bermuda Gold Cup and the New Zealand open match race title in 1988, the IOR 50-footer World Cup title in 1990 with Abracadabra, and once more in 1992 with Champosa VII, together with an Admiral’s Cup win in 1997.
Loads of this racing was funded by personal house owners, significantly Dr. James Andrews, maybe probably the most feted sports activities surgeon in the USA. “I sailed on Abracadabra for years, and Dr. Andrews would open his checkbook. He wished to win. He knew if he wished to play the sport within the [IOR] 50-foot class, he needed to pay the boys, pay the boat captain, pay the sailmaker. He spent some huge cash.”
Kolius recollects a day in San Francisco when a Sports activities Illustrated reporter requested Andrews why he paid for this system however didn’t drive the boat.
“We had by no means spoken about that, ever,” Kolius says. “I believed I used to be offering him with what he wished, and possibly I used to be, and typically possibly I used to be offering him what I actually wished… I’m not likely positive. However bless his soul, he mentioned, ‘I have the funds for that I may most likely purchase a Triple-A baseball workforce, however they’re not going to let me play second base.’ That was his philosophy.
“[The owners] are a part of the workforce, and I feel that’s the way in which quite a lot of these individuals had been feeling. Now, did we burn them out throughout that point? There’re lots of people on the market which are prepared to place up the nut to get a workforce began, however the imaginative and prescient must be practical. There must be alternate strategies of revenue for the house owners. How are you going to make your a reimbursement? That’s what it wants, being an funding as a substitute of an expenditure.”
There was no scarcity of crusing occasions in search of a paying viewers to make it an funding. In that interval of the late Nineties, it was the Final 30 class of which Kolius was an element. Now an nearly forgotten footnote to the lengthy historical past {of professional} crusing circuits, it had all the standard trappings: prize cash and short-course racing; on this case, in dinghy-style 30-foot boats with an open-design rule. The Final 30s had been like magnesium—they flared brightly after they hit the water, after which went out rapidly.
“We maintain capturing ourselves within the foot—I feel, personally—by persevering with to push the design program. In case you’re going to have true skilled crusing, choose a ship and let the crews battle it out. Crusing continues to attempt to promote the design of crusing boats—promote the idea of crusing—when it must be promoting the workforce facet of crusing and promoting the characters which are within the sport. It’s cheaper. I can let you know that for positive.”
When the America’s Cup did come again to life in 1992, Kolius was part of it with Paul Cayard’s Il Moro de Venezia problem. They had been defeated within the America’s Cup closing by America Cubed. “I helped Paul, did some teaching, kind of crew teaching and crew-management-type teaching, and in addition sailed the second boat,” Kolius says. He then labored with the America Cubed Basis to educate the Mighty Mary workforce in 1995.
“I did a greater job, I really feel like, of being a coach once I was with Paul—and I coached the ladies’s workforce somewhat bit. I felt like I did a greater job doing that than I did being the skipper and fundraiser, no matter, of the America II program and the Hawaii program.”
The Hawaii program was Aloha Racing, additionally backed by Andrews and sponsored by HealthSouth. They got here ninth within the spherical robins of the 2000 Louis Vuitton Cup, and it was Kolius’ closing Cup look. “I used to be fairly properly burned to a crisp after 2000,” he says. So, he returned to his roots, the place the place his love of crusing had began.
Kolius went Sunfish crusing—the boat had been a giant a part of each his and his spouse Joanne’s life, and he got here in second on the Worlds in 2002. (Joanne’s greatest result’s seventh.) He additionally did some J/80 crusing with Caleb Borchers and three members of the crusing workforce from La Porte Excessive Faculty in Texas, the place Joanne was principal. He then obtained collectively a workforce of his previous Cup crewmates. “It was enjoyable, however then swiftly it was too critical as a result of ‘we gotta win.’ The women [from La Porte] all the time stored you stage,” he says.
It felt like one thing had essentially shifted in his relationship with the game. “I feel my horizon was shortening after the America’s Cup in 2000,” he says. “I obtained mentored by a complete bunch of great individuals; it’s the one cause I obtained the place I used to be. And so, after 2000, I believed, properly man, possibly I must do a greater job of doing the identical factor. And so, that’s sort of the place that led into having the youngsters crew [the J/80], and into instructing crusing at the highschool stage, down right here in Florida.”
In 2011, he bought the crusing enterprise he had began in Texas within the Nineties and took a yr off with Joanne to go fishing within the Bahamas. “After which, it was identical to there’s no going again…”
There was one factor that may have gotten him again right into a topflight boat. “I beloved, love, love offshore racing,” Kolius says. “That was truly extra enjoyable to me than the buoy racing or the match racing, to be sincere. What I ought to have accomplished, I ought to have gone into the singlehanded around-the-world stuff as a result of I’d’ve had a good time doing that, however I didn’t do it.”
He says he did attempt to get on Cayard’s workforce (EF Language, Whitbread winner in 1997-98), nonetheless. “I didn’t beg, however I hinted a few instances, and he didn’t take the trace, so I dropped it. I ought to’ve begged as a result of I’d’ve beloved to have accomplished it. I’m undecided he would have taken me, however possibly, and by that point the America’s Cup got here up and I had to decide on, and I did what I did. I feel if these kind of occasions (Admiral’s Cup) had been nonetheless occurring, I’d have hung round for longer than I did. I was bored with being a supervisor. I wished to be a sailor once more.”
Lately, Kolius has discovered a brand new outlet: “My spouse and I like sport fishing. We obtained into sport fishing as a result of once I retired from crusing, the percentages on my spouse—who can be extraordinarily aggressive and in addition a great sailor—the percentages on us retiring to a sailboat was zero. We’d be at one another’s throat the entire time, however we each love the ocean. So, what are you going to do? We’re not trawler individuals, so we determined to attempt sport fishing. It’s identical to again to the identical mentor factor; the boys that had been actually good would take us—as a result of we’re simply mother and pop sport fishing—however they’d take us below their wing and educate us their strategies.”
Whereas John Kolius might need wrapped up his crusing profession, he did discover the nice life, or maybe the nice life lastly discovered him.
