Bill Donohue

Sailing and the water have long been a focus of Bill Donohue's life. He started sailing at age 7; by the time he was 8, he was racing a Penguin, a doublehanded dinghy popular with junior sailors on the New Jersey shore where he grew up. Penguin racing in that era on Barnegat Bay was nurturing an entire fleet of hot sailors—including America's Cup racers like Gary Jobson and Bill Campbell. 

When Donohue talks about the path his life took after his early Penguin days, he talks about each chapter in terms of the boats he sailed: the Flying Scot of his late teens, Comets and Lightnings, and the larger racing keelboats sailed under a handicap-rule system of his early adulthood.

At age 18, Donohue was disabled in a car accident, and his leg was amputated when he was in his 40s. "But I never stopped sailing," he says. As a disabled person, sailing was the one sport from his youth that Donohue could stay active in—and he gives you a clear sense that his ability to keep sailing was not only about winning more races: "Sailing," he says, "was my salvation."

These days, you will find Donohue as crew onboard a triplehanded Sonar and spending time on the water with a global ambition: to win a medal at the Paralympic Games in Qingdao. In the summer of 2006, he was introduced to Rick Doerr, a fellow New Jersey sailor and a veteran campaigner in Paralympic circles. Doerr was looking for crew; when Donohue agreed to come on board, a new arena in the sport he loved opened up.

For Donohue, Doerr, and third crew Tim Angle, medal-level finishes in the Sonar class became the norm in 2006. In 2007, this crew won the IFDS Disabled Sailing World Championship and the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials; that same year, they were named by the U.S. Olympic Committee the Paralympians of the Year for Sailing.

When Donohue talks about making a transition to the Paralympic arena, his biggest challenge wasn't adjusting to a new boat. His biggest challenge was switching from the role of skipper to crew. "I try not to be a backseat driver," he jokes.

Donohue sees his team to be a strong one, with each player bringing an impressive sailing background to this Sonar campaign. But when Donohue gets onboard, what he brings with him are all his years of sailing, in all different kinds of boats. That kind of experience helps both in the moves this crew makes together on the racecourse, and in the mental aspects of how the game is played.

It's that mental aspect of sailing that drew Donohue into the sport and kept him there as he adjusted to life as a disabled person. And it is what he loves most about racing sailboats, "the fact," he says, "that you can compete against people using your head—rather than your physical abilities."

SIGNIFICANT SAILING ACHIEVEMENTS:

Ranked #1 on the US Sailing Disabled Sailing Team (2006-2008)
U.S. Olympic Committee Paralympians of the Year/Sailing (Team Award-2007)

SAILING RESUME:

2008
9th US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR/Miami, Florida

2007
1st IFDS Disabled Sailing World Championship/Rochester, New York
1st U.S. Paralympic Team Trials – Sailing/Newport, Rhode Island
2nd US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR

2006
1st US SAILING Pre-Trials/Newport, Rhode Island
1st C. Thomas Clagett Jr. Memorial Regatta/Newport, Rhode Island