Sarah Mergenthaler

Qingdao, China - Six races in, and the 2008 Olympics leaderboard is starting to take shape. The Qingdao sun is definitely shining on team Australia in the 470 classes, with first places in both the Men's event and Women's Olympic event (where they're tied with NED). As with all the other classes, it's been a serious of slow, technical races so far - rewarding some and challenging others. Patience, at least at the Beijing Olympics, seems to be a winning virtue - so far.

Words cannot begin to describe our Opening Ceremony Experience from Beijing last night. There simply isn’t the vocabulary that has the ability to draw deep enough meaning. It was the thrill of our lives to walk through the tunnel and into the Stadium surrounded by our country’s great athletes and wearing the Team USA uniform!

We’ve just finished our final day of training at Yin Hai Yacht Club in Qingdao, China. This is the end of our last big training session before the Olympic Games! Our boat is loaded into a container, which will be shipped into the Olympic venue on July 22^nd. The past two and a half weeks of training have been jam-packed but very successful.   Most of the training days delivered the exact conditions we wanted for speed testing, equipment evaluation as well as mock races and starts. We’ve been working hard to get our speed and trim closer to perfect in lig

Qingdao, China - We arrived in Qingdao just over a week ago for our final training camp before the Olympic Games begin. When we were here training in May, we were one of a small group of teams training out of the Yin Hai Yacht Club, the official training site for the Olympics. Now, the boat park is a noisy, crowded yet exciting place.

In High School, a Jersey Girl named Sarah Mergenthaler lettered in five varsity sports, none of which were sailing. Sarah has been working toward her goal of becoming a world class sailor for most of her life, but that didn't get in the way of all the other sports at which she excelled. These include soccer, track, basketball, cross-country, and (American) football, where this first-string record-setter was the only girl on the varsity team.