Stu McNay
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For most sailors, strategy is the gameplan you make on the water. But for 470 skipper Stu McNay, strategic thinking is far more powerful when it's applied both on the water and off.
"Strategic thinking can be applied in two senses," says McNay as he surveys his Olympic path. "The first is strategic thinking as decision-making on the racecourse … The second sense is strategic thinking as program management."
That strategic approach has made McNay and crew Graham Biehl the top U.S. Mens 470 team in the United States. Both sailors raced the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in 2003, hoping for a berth for the 2004 Games. But they each competed on different boats, with McNay finishing fifth in the '03 Trials and Biehl finishing second.
At the time of the '03 Trials, McNay was juggling his undergraduate education at Yale University with his Olympic effort. Although the volume of racing an intercollegiate sailor does gave him solid training on the water, he knew his Olympic effort required full-time focus.
"I wanted to finish college, so that I had a clean slate for sailing," says McNay. "I graduated in spring '05 and began to organize my life around sailing."
Full-time focus and a strategic approach to their campaign gave McNay and Biehl what they needed to win the Trials: they walked away from the regatta with a win, without having to sail the last two races. They both believe the strategy of bringing in coach Nigel Cochrane 10 months before the Trials was key to their success.
McNay started sailing at age 9, and at age 11 he started racing at the Beverly Yacht Club in Massachusetts in the Optimist class. He sailed an Optimist until he aged out at 16; but before he moved on to 420s and Laser Radials, he knew an Olympic effort was in his future.
"I knew sailing was an Olympic sport and saw that as a goal on the horizon," says McNay. "By the time I was sixteen, I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics and started choosing my class of sailboat accordingly."
As McNay and Biehl complete their final leg of training before heading to Qingdao, they know they've built a strong program but have further to go. According to McNay, they both have identical goals but complementary skills: "We have found how to use this to our advantage," says McNay, of their different skill sets, "making our team dynamic stronger than we each are as individuals."
They are working on making boat speed second nature, so they can focus more on racecourse decisions, and are in the process of choosing the equipment they will use at the Olympic regatta.
Whatever training is left, however, McNay knows he will arrive in China with two key traits deeply embedded in his psyche as an athlete: strategic thinking and determination. Says McNay: "I work really hard to do whatever is in my power to succeed."
SIGNIFICANT SAILING ACHIEVEMENTS:
ICSA All-American (2003, 2005)
SAILING RESUME:
6th Delta Lloyd Regatta/Medemblik, Netherlands
19th 470 World Championships/Melbourne, Australia
2007
1st U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Sailing/Long Beach, California
8th Sydney International Regatta/Sydney, Australia
10th ISAF Sailing World Championships/Cascais, Portugal
2006
8th 470 North American Championships/Miami, Florida
8th The Good Luck Beijing – 2006 Qingdao International Regatta/Qingdao, China
9th XI Barcelona Olympic Sailing Week/Spain
17th 470 World Championships/Rizhao, China
2005
3rd US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR/Miami, Florida
5th 470 North American Championships/San Francisco, California
2004
2nd US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR
