New guy off to perfect start

American sailor has been disappointed time and again in quest for Olympics, but his debut on Extreme Sailing circuit was a wild success, Dusty Lane writes.

Morgan Larson has come up just short plenty of times, thank you very much. Barely scraping out a win is much better. Competing for the first time in the Extreme Sailing Series, the American skipper led Oman Air to a surprise victory in the season's opening act at The Wave on the Gulf of Oman last week.

Larson's crew immediately surprised the field, jumping into a tie for the lead after the opening day of the four-day event, then consistently sailing to dominant victories as the week unfolded.

"It's an amazing feeling," Larson said. "It was a challenging week and obviously our learning curve was quite steep. But this was really hard racing and any team could have won going into those last couple of races and we were just lucky that they went well for us. I'm sure there was a bit of beginner's luck to this one and we just dug in and focused hard."

Larson may be new to the Extreme circuit, but he's hardly new to sailing. His has been a successful career sprinkled with wild disappointments.

The son of a sailor growing up in Santa Cruz, Calif., Larson won the junior national championship in 1988. He went on to enjoy a successful college career, splitting time between the College of Charleston and the University of Hawaii, and winning a national title in the process. Larson said college sailing's style is similar in some aspects to Extreme Sailing.

"College sailing's a great arena," he said. "It's obviously slower boats than this form of sailing, but it is tight-course racing and a little bit of positioning. Skills you learn in that help you in this kind of racing.

"It would be like a football field that's the size of a tennis court - it's just more man-on-man."

Larson faced the well-worn post-college dilemma - pursue his dream, or get a real job.

The thin line between a life of sailing and a life in the business world came down to the simplest of things: Beer.

"After college I just thought I was going to get a job and then some guy asked me to come race on his boat," Larson said. "(He was) an amateur sort of weekend sailor who wanted to win a race and hired a couple of us young guys and gave us some beer money, basically, and a few bucks. That worked out well and it just started snowballing from there."

Thus was launched a successful career that's seen Larson compete in two America's Cups and make a serious run for the Olympics three times, in 1996, 2000 and 2004.

All three times, Larson's crew had performed well at the pre-Olympics the previous year, claiming either silver or bronze.

He reached the final race at Olympic qualifying for the 2000 and 2004 Games, only to be disqualified for early starts.

"We jumped the gun and that's part of sailing," he said. "Your nerves are up and we needed a hot start to win the race and we probably should have just backed it off a little bit."

Twisting the knife a bit, the rules in qualifying are such that the crews don't find out immediately that they have been disqualified. It isn't until the first checkpoint that boats are forced to withdraw, leaving just enough time to build a dream big enough to be crushed.

"Going into the first mark we were leading, and our closest competitor was deep in the field," Larson said. "We just had that kind of heartbeat that, this is it, we're going to the Olympics, we just have to get around the track."

Larson, now 40, hasn't decided if he'll make one more run at the Games.

He does say the 250-day training schedule is probably too demanding for a man who's now focused on starting a family. Among Extreme Sailing's principle attractions for him is the fact the schedule's only 80 days, and training time is strictly limited, as are the money and modifications that go into the boats.

"I would say it's as close to NASCAR racing as you get," he said. "America's Cup is more Formula One - it's more equipment-oriented, whereas in this we are limited on what we can purchase. You're basically all the same (sail size) all the parts and pieces are the same, you weigh the same. It's pretty strict one-design class racing."

Larson will take his points lead to Qingdao for the series' next stop, from April 17-20.