Rick Doerr
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When you ask Rick Doerr, Paralympic skipper of the triplehanded Sonar, to name his most significant achievement in sailing, he does not answer his team’s win at last year’s IFDS Disabled Sailing World Championship, or their win at the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials, or the fact that his team has been the #1-ranked team on the US Disabled Sailing Team for three years. His reply is simply, ”sailing again after being disabled.”
Doerr is very much aware that the medals and accolades are the icing on the cake: the deeper reward is being able to play a game that let him reconnect to his past after a spinal cord injury in 1992. “Sailing got me back to a place where I felt familiar after my injury,” says Doerr. “When I started sailing again, my health improved.”
Doerr grew up on Barnegat Bay—racing Lightnings, Comets and catamarans—and his family and friends of his youth were avid sailors. “At a young age, I was forced to crew for my older siblings, who were ruthless. One time, I lacerated my leg in a Lightning regatta and tried to walk away ...” But he was drawn back to the sport.
His first Paralympic class was the singlehanded 2.4mR, and he aced the fleet as a North American champion. But once he sailed the Sonar, which has active able-bodied and disabled competition in the U.S., he fell for a boat that he describes as “well balanced, sensitive, and high performance” He also enjoys the great rewards of being a part of a team.
His career as a physician in plastic and reconstructive surgery is another passion. “Some of the challenges of the race course prepare me for [my work],” he told Windcheck magazine. “And some of the challenges of the O.R. help me put adversity on the racecourse into perspective.”
Doerr and his crew of Tim Angle and Bill Donohue arrived at the U.S. Trials in October ’07 looking golden. They were fresh from their win at the Worlds; they won three of the regatta’s four opening races. But that winning streak did not continue.
Back-of-the-fleet finishes and tough competition from U.S. skippers Paul Callahan and Albert Foster ensued, and the high-states Trials developed into a strategic mindgame for Doerr and his crew, which they won after nine days. Doerr found a silver lining in that struggle: "The strong competition here in the U.S.,” he says, “has only pushed us to another level."
It seems fitting that Doerr would credit his rivals for only making him better, for his actions show that he is not only concerned about winning races but he cares about the community of disabled sailing—about making sure others who also have to put their lives back together after a traumatic accident have the same opportunities.
Doerr now serves as the Sonar Class President, as Disabilities Director of the New England Competitive Sailing Center, and as a board member of Sail Habilitation. "It is my way of giving back to a sport that has provided me with so much, all my life.”
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)
U.S. Olympic Committee Paralympic Athlete of the Year/Sailing (2006)
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
1st C. Thomas Clagett Jr. Memorial Regatta/Newport, Rhode Island
2nd US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR
2006
1st US SAILING Pre-Trials/Newport, Rhode Island
1st America's Disabled Open Midwinter Championship/St. Petersburg, Florida
1st C. Thomas Clagett Jr. Memorial Regatta/Newport, Rhode Island
2nd US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR
2nd Disabled Midwinter Championship/St. Petersburg, Florida
2nd Lands' End St. Petersburg Regatta/St. Petersburg, Florida
2nd US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR
20th Sonar North American Championships/Marblehead, Massachusetts
2005
1st America's Regatta/St. Petersburg, Florida
1st Disabled Midwinter Championship/St. Petersburg, Florida
4th US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR
2004
1st America's Regatta/St. Petersburg Florida
