Tim Angle

Like every athlete competing at an elite level, Tim Angle’s life is jam-packed. For seven years he has campaigned a triplehanded Sonar with skipper Rick Doerr, in the hopes of making the U.S. team for the Paralympic Games. In the early days of the campaign, Angle was a college student studying electrical engineering (one term was compressed to six weeks of class to accommodate sailing). Today, as a manager at iRobot—a company that sells robots designed for everything from household to military use—his time at regattas is mixed with heavy doses of daily computer time, to keep things running smoothly at work.

And as if he doesn’t have enough responsibilities to juggle, in May, he's taking maternity leave. But he is not an expectant father. Angle is hoping for another type of milestone: a Paralympic medal.

“We call it ‘Tim’s Maternity Leave’,” jokes Angle, as he talks about this final stretch of training before the Paralympic Games.  As of May 1, he will focus full time on sailing.

For the 2004 Games, Angle and Doerr, racing then with crew Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, finished third at the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials. But their track record during the current quadrennium—with crew Bill Donohue rounding out the trio—built a different kind of promise. On the eve of the U.S. Trials, they won the IFDS Sailing World Championship; a month later, they triumphed in a close battle at the U.S. Trials in Rhode Island.

Angle’s heritage is closely knit to the sport, and his family tree includes several generations of sailors.  Angle’s father was, “the reason I became a sailor,” he says. His father took him sailing when he was two weeks old; by age eight, Angle was skippering his own boat. Junior racing lead to sailing at Marblehead High School. But as a college freshman, Angle lost his arm to bacterial meningitis and took time off from school.

When he returned to school, he gravitated to the sailing team. He rigged a dinghy so he could steer the boat with his feet—but Angle admits it wasn’t a fast way to sail. He started coaching the team and deepened his education as a sailor. Racing a Sonar against disabled and able-bodied sailors has been his home in competitive sailing for seven years.

Patience, Angle believes, is a survival tool for someone with a disability: “You have a problem, and you have to be patient; you have to figure out how to solve it, for the next time.”

Success in sailing, he believes, is also tied to patience. Coaches Peter Wilson and Betsy Alison have ingrained that value into the minds of this team, teaching them to gamble intelligently on the racecourse—to not take long-shot chances but to be patient and take calculated risks that can pay off at the finish line.

But in another sense, Angle feels he and his teammates have waited long enough:  “We’ve been patient for seven years,” he says. “Now, it’s our turn to represent our country.”

SIGNIFICANT SAILING ACHIEVEMENTS:

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

2005
1st America's Regatta/St. Petersburg, Florida
1st Disabled Midwinter Championship/St. Petersburg, Florida
4th US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR