I think that if someone is able to succeed in college sailing it is likely that with enough practice and dedication they will succeed in Olympic type sailing. The same skills are transferable from college to Olympic stuff, the emphasis is just placed on a different portion of the skills. In college you never really get involved in tuning and in Olympic sailing there is a great weight placed on straight line speed as the result of longer races. In Olympic sailing it seems that there is less emphasis on “powerful boat handling” that is crucial to maneuver through the tight corners of college sailing and in college we never really tackle boat preparation (unless you break a lark at Tufts). While both college and Olympic sailing involve the same basic skill sets with different levels of importance placed on these sets, I think that it remains clear that the best Olympic sailors from the USA mostly are products of college sailing.
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