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Monday, September 25
McKee brothers have one last hurrah
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- Brothers Jonathan and Charlie McKee of
Seattle were ready to bag their Olympic sailing careers when an
adrenaline rush called the 49er class came along.
The thrills of sailing the high-speed, winged skiff were too
much to pass up, even though they were both pushing their late 30s.
And after winning Olympic medals separately, they got to compete
together.
|  | | Brothers Jonathan, left, and Charlie McKee won their final race by a large margin of 1:26. |
Their decision to try the Olympics at least once more paid off
when they won the bronze medal with a clutch victory in the 16th
and final fleet race Monday (Sunday night ET).
"This boat came along and it just re-energized us," Charlie
McKee said. "It was like, `Hey, this is an opportunity for us to
sail together again,' and we were having a good time and doing
pretty well."
Jonathan McKee, 40, won the Flying Dutchman gold medal in 1984
and Charlie, 38, took the 470 bronze in 1988.
"It's a great feeling for us, at what would have to be the end
of our Olympic careers, to be able to top it off here by winning
the medals as brothers," said Charlie McKee, who started sailing
with Jonathan some 25 years ago on Seattle's Lake Washington.
"It's pretty special."
Although the McKees will sail for the America's Cup challenge
mounted by telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw in 2002-03 in
New Zealand, sailing officials aren't quite convinced that they're
done with the 49er class.
"We sort of had this vision of the McKees walking down to the
49er dock with a walking stick and competing in about 2020 at some
other end of the earth," said Glenn Bourke, the Olympic sailing
competition manager.
If they don't come back, they'll always remember the moment when
they shared the medal and high-fives on Sydney Harbor.
They needed a great finish on a cold, gray, blustery afternoon
to win a medal, and they got it by winning the final race by a
whopping 1 minute, 26 seconds.
The brothers, normally reserved after victories earlier in the
regatta, hugged and slapped hands.
"It's pretty exciting," said Jonathan McKee, the skipper.
"We've sailed together on and off for 25 years and we've never had
an opportunity to go to the Olympics (together), and here we are.
It's definitely something special to do it together."
Also Monday, 470 skipper Paul Foerster of Rockwall, Texas,
rebounded from a 13th-place finish in the ninth fleet race to win
the 10th race. He is in second place overall with one race to go.
Women's 470 skipper J.J. Isler finished sixth and third, and is
third with one race to go.
The deciding 470 races will be sailed Wednesday (Tuesday night
ET). Foerster won the silver medal in the discontinued Flying
Dutchman in 1992 and Isler won the 470 bronze that year.
Britain's Ian Barker and Simon Hiscocks were third in Monday's
49er finale to finish four points ahead of the McKees for the
silver. Finland's Thomas Johanson and Jyrki Jarvi clinched the gold
two days earlier.
Charlie McKee made perfect calls reading the shifts sailing into
the final turning mark and they rounded with a big lead.
They hoisted their red spinnaker, hiked out in their trapeze
harnesses and blew down the run to the finish, toward Sydney Opera
House and the Harbor Bridge.
As the fleet returned to Rushcutters Bay, the Finns, Brits and
Americans flew their country flag spinnakers. Those sails were used
in the first two fleet races, but had to be stowed after organizers
discovered that the printing process weakened the cloth.
It's the first sailing medal for the Americans in these games,
and leaves them just one short of matching their disappointing
total in 1996.
The 49er -- named for its length, 4.99 meters -- was designed by
an Aussie based on the popular Sydney 18-footers.
The McKees were the oldest sailors in the Olympic 49er fleet,
which clearly got a lot of attention at these games.
"I think it's an exciting type of boat that the kids sitting at
home can look at something like this and say, `Yeah, that's cool,
that's the kind of sailing that I want to do,"' Jonathan McKee
said. "Not to take anything away from the other classes, but it's
fun to be a part of something that's kind of cutting edge."
Finn skipper Russ Silvestri of Tiburon, Calif., improved one
spot to seventh overall after finishes of sixth and 11th. Star
skipper Mark Reynolds of San Diego, a four-time Olympian and former
gold medalist, dropped a spot to 11th after finishing 11th and
fifth. The Finns and Stars have seven races left.
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