Stars of the Star

Winners of last week's Star European Championship Marks Mendelblatt and Strube discuss themselves and their Olympic campaign

Winning three races in a row at major Olympic classes championship may be something which happens if your name is Ben Ainslie, but not in the Star class. However last week at Rolex Baltic Week in Neustadt Germany, an American duo achieved just this during the European championship for the venerable two man Olympic keelboat.

While with a few exceptions like Robert Scheidt the Laser is the boat of lightweight 20 somethings, the Star is very much a grown-up's boat where some of our sport's greatest such as Athens Gold medallist Torben Grael, Paul Cayard, John Kostecki and even from time to time Russell Coutts come to check in. It has proved a boat for all ages and Star sailors have been known to continue racing even into their 70s.

Thus it comes as little surprise that last week's Star winners Mark Mendelblatt and his burly crewman Mark Strube are in their 30s. The duo launched their program at the beginning of last season with a win in a local district regatta in Miami, but followed this up swiftly taking out the top US and international competition in the class' hotly contested Bacardi Cup. This year prior to the Europeans they also secured the top place at Kiel Week.

Mendelblatt and Strube are both Florida residents now. Mendelblatt is from their originally - he grew up sailing Optimists out of St Petersburg Yacht Club where we try to hid our grin when he tells us he raced them up until the age of 15. "I was a little on the small side so I stuck with it for quite a long time," he admits. However he competed internationally in the Oppie competing in five World Championships, his best result being a fourth place.

"Because I was quite small I went from the Optimist to double handed sailing," Mendelblatt continues. "I raced Laser IIs a lot and I sailed doublehanded dinghies like the 420 and FJ, through high school. I also did some Snipe sailing and a little bit of International 14 sailing because I was not big enough for the Laser." It was only when he went to college in New England that he bulked up enough to take on the Olympic singlehanded. Having made three attempts to get to the Olympics he finally succeeded in winning US Sailing's winner-takes-all trials for Athens, where he ended up 8th.

Having none of Mendelblatt's size issues, Mark Strube has been a Star crew for 12 years now with many of the big names in the class like Augie Diaz, while he sailed the last Olympic trials with the present World No.1 George Szabo. "I have probably had about 30 helmsmen over the years that I have sailed with," he claims. This will be his third attempt at the Olympics.

With his American footballer frame, Strube was always destined for power applications in our sport. While Mendelblatt began sailing keelboats during college and it is now an integral member of the afterguard on John Coumantaros' TP 52 Bambakou, Strube has been an even more active big boat sailing background. He got involved with the America's Cup when he signed up with America True in 1998, jumping ship to be part of the Abracadabra syndicate with whom he sailed the 2000 Louis Vuitton Challenger series. At present he is not with a Cup campaign, but is a regular on Tom Hill's Virgin Islands-based Reichel Pugh 75 Titan and was with the short lived Genuine Risk maxi-boat campaign from the outset. His grinding/mast man skills have also been employed on Morning Glory, the first generation TP 52 Rosebud, and lately on the Swan 601 Moneypenny which he will be sailing shortly at the Rolex Swan Worlds in Sardinia.

The duo met during the 2003 Cup cycle when both were with Peter Gilmour's start-stop-start OneWorld campaign. "He wanted to do a campaign for the 2004 Olympics and had already been training for them in the Laser so we just sort of decided then and there that we would go for the 2008 Olympics in the Star," says the amiable Strube of his helm.



Mendelblatt acknowledges that Athens was going to be his last crack at Olympic glory in the Laser. "I am 33 now and I knew for a while that I was going to get into the Star, but I did not think it was going to happen so quickly. I actually bought my first boat at the Olympics from Colin Beashel and US Sailing shipped it back for me which was great so I was in it straight away," he says.

Moving from the Laser into the Star has resulted in a quantum leap in logistical complexity for Mendelblatt. With the Laser it was a case of jump on a plane, turn up and sail. With the Star you have the personal relationship of sailing with your crew, the boat is bigger and benefits from considerable development work, and you need two or ideally three boats (one in the US, Europe and China). And the cost inevitably is just astronomic in comparison - possibly another reason why 20 somethings tend to steer clear.

"People are sailing Stars on varying levels of funding," says Mendelblatt. I think you could do a competitive campaign on $150,000- 200,000." This breaks down into new boats - $40-50,000 apiece and campaign costs of $50,000 per year. "That is quite basic - it would give you the money to buy sails and pay a coach a little bit. You can't afford to have a full time coach but you can do the travel and transport for that. Obviously the more money you have the better shot you have."

Both obviously full time professional sailors now, both Marks have had 'proper' jobs. Mendelblatt was a municipal bond salesman in St Petersburg full time until he moved to New Zealand for the Cup, while Strube has worked at a rigging shop in Palm Beach, a job which allows him to sail as much as he pleases, although he admits his contribution was only about eight weeks last year .

Compared to the compartively fortunate infrastructure Olympic sailors have in the UK and some other European countries, sailors in the US in particular don't receive the same financial support. "Now I have to do a lot of big boat sailing as work to offset the cost of the Star sailing, but I enjoy doing that anyway so it is not a big hassle," admits Mendelblatt. "Pretty much the money I earn for sailing goes straight out the door to fund the Star, so it is pretty crazy." They do have some gear sponsorship in the form of Kaenon sunglasses and Harken deckgear while stargear.net gives them discounts on clothing.

However the funding from US Sailing is improving. "I know they are working pretty hard. US Sailing have actually generated a lot more money already than they had through the whole four years last time," says Strube.

In terms of boats, Colin Beashel's old Folli Star has now been sold and this year our intrepid duo have been campaigning regattas in Europe in a Lillia, while they have a new Folli on order. They will then be able to trial the two boats to determine the quicker. The principle way of telling a Folli-built Star from an otherwise identical-looking Lillia one, we are informed, is looking at the position of the backstay attachment to the deck - these tend to be aft on the Lillias and forward on the Follis. Now you know .

"This is only my third regatta that I have been in a Lillia - the boat seems to light up a little quicker downwind," says Strube, the Star veteran. "I don't know if it has more buoyancy at the front but you seem to be able to surf at the eight to ten knot range easier. The Lillia will stay on the wave a little longer. I think also in heavy wind the Lillia is a little quicker downwind, certainly they seemed to be in Kiel.

"I also think the Folli is able to point a lot higher. The Lillia for whatever reason, foots faster but does not point. If you look at a couple of the top guys who have them, like Iain Percy and Mateusz [Kusznierewicz], they go fast but if they are below you it is not a worry because they are not going to pinch you up. They can foot and go very fast and that is what we have found."

Since Strube began his Star sailing a crew weight rule has been introduced - before this the rule was to get a crew as heavy as possible and 150kg weight lifter types would often be seen at the front of the boat. Now crew weight is based on a formula where from a starting point of 100kg each for skipper and crew as the helm's weight goes up or down by 1.5kg the crew can go the opposite way by 1kg.

"Talking to Robert Scheidt he tends to believe that where he is - a 85kg helm and a 110kg crew - is the best, but then if you look at Percy and Mitchell and Matteusz and his crew they are almost 100kg and 100kg," says Strube. "One advantage with that is if you have a 100kg skipper and crew you have more total weigh, but my feeling is if you have a heavier crew then it is a lower centre of gravity, more weight over the side, less windage and it is better through tacks because the crew is usually quicker than the helm. I tend to think that Scheidt has it about right but Mark still wants to gain some weight. He wants to get a little stronger because in big breeze it can be pretty hard to pull the main in."



Mendelblatt (centre) earning his keep on board John Coumantaros' Bambakou

The ideal physique of a Star crew, we are told, is to have an upper body that is as big/heavy as possible and ideally short thighs to keep them out of the water.

In recent years the Star class has had a slight shock to the system with a major influx of talented and much medalled Olympians from the Finn and Laser classes. Oddly there was a strong migration from the Finn in the form of Iain Percy, Freddie Loof, etc before the Athens Olympics, while this Olympic cycle has seen a bigger crossover from the Laser in the form of Robert Scheidt, Mendelblatt and the newly crowned European Champion Diego Negri.

"With the new wave of Finn and Laser sailors we are definitely seeing people hiking and working harder," says Strube. "Iain [Percy] is one of those guys who when it is windier can just dominate. Last Europeans when he won there were a couple of days where it was blowing 25-28 knots. And that was not by a boatlength - he took the races by about 20 boatlengths."

In terms of their program, neither Mendelblatt or Strube are at present sailing the Star full time, nor have they got a coach or a training partner because their erratic schedules. "Usually we are just showing up at regattas one or two days before the event and not training before which is not good. It means we are a little hit and miss, but sometimes we will have a couple of breaks and we will have a good event while at others it will not go so well," says Strube. For the Europeans Mendelblatt pitched up the night before the regatta directly from Copa del Rey. "We are giving up a lot to the teams who are training on a more full time basis. I do not actually know if anyone is training full time but there are certainly people who are training much harder than us and putting in much more time on the water in the boat than us. I can see when we race against them that they are a little more polished with their boat handling and sometimes they just have a little edge and know how to set their boats up for different conditions a little better than we do."

Mendelblatt also acknowledges this limitation of their campaign but the duo plan to spend much more time in the boat next year in the build up to the US trials in Los Angeles. "It is winner takes all but it is a long series I think it is going to be 16 races with three short races a day. I think whoever can be the best after 16 races then they deserve their place on the team," says Strube.

For some reason the Star class has always been one of the US Olympic team's strongest - Strube thinks it is down to the long history of US sailor competing in the class at the top level, so the trials will represent as cut throat a competition as any international regatta. The line-up just for the US trials is likely to include those who sailed last week at the Europeans such as Mendleblatt, Andrew Horton, George Szabo and Andrew MacDonald, but also the likes of Paul Cayard and John Kostecki. One to watch...