RECENT COVERAGE : February 17, 2008
Looking at the Yngling class’ score card for US Sailing’s Rolex Miami OCR, you would have thought that NED 1 was a magic combination.  Mandy Mulder, Marye Farber and Merel Witteveen seemed to have had the boat, their positions and the wind, current and weather conditions figured out in Miami.  They sailed so well that you would have guessed that they had been sailing together for quite a while.  They were one of a few Yngling teams that came off the water with more than two wins during the week.   However, their confidence was swept away with the cold front and high winds that passed through Miami during the first few days of the 2008 World Championships.  While two of the Dutch teams stood on the podium at the end of US Sailing’s MOCR, none of the Dutch entries made it into the Medal Round at the 2008 World Championships that followed.

The truth is NED 1 can be any combination of nine Dutch Yngling sailors at any given regatta.  While the weather conditions changed from one regatta to another in Miami, the crews did not.  However, looking down the score sheet for most international Women’s Yngling regattas, there are three Dutch boats in the line up.  One of the combinations qualified Netherlands for the Olympics at the 2007 World Championships in Cascais last summer.  Just because that team had the formula to overcome strong winds and exhausting conditions better than the other NED crews, doesn’t mean that they were a shoe in to represent the country at the Olympics.  Yes, qualifying your country for the Olympics looks good on each crew member’s resume as do performances at other ISAF ranking events and the Olympic Test Event, but at the end of the day, their coaches decide who takes the helm, who takes the middle and who takes the bow of the NED Olympic entry. 

Coaches Maurice Paardenkooper and Marjon Kooistra will have all nine women second guessing one another, sailing their hearts out, attempting to please one another and trying to embody all of the right things that they feel it will take to be among the remaining three contestants in a game of survivor that lasts through June 2008.  Imagine that!  Most other countries will have finalized their decision about which athletes will be on their squad shortly after the World Championships.  The rationale for those countries’ selection process is that it will remove one of the greatest uncertainties of being an Olympic athlete; knowing that you are going.

Not so with the Dutch.  Yes, Mandy Mulder, Marje Faber, Merel Witteveen, Renee Groeneveld, Annemike Bes, Marje Kampen, Janneke Hin, Brechtje Van der Werf and Floortje Hendriksen have the advantages of being funded and recognized as the top women Yngling sailors at home but, they will live with the uncertainty of knowing whether or not they will be named to the team that goes to Qingdao until very late in the game.  They are taking part in a unique selection process that has only been employed for this quadrennium’s Yngling squad.  Coach Kooistra explained that casting calls went out over the Internet and the federation received 80 responses, including the members of the Dutch Yngling team that sailed at the Olympics in Athens.  Following initial auditions in Mememblick, the top 20 sailors were invited to Palma.  The nine winners comprise the team that is fully funded and on the road for 240 days a year.   

Sometime in June 2008 coaches Paardenkooper and Kooistra will make a decision about who will be among the best of the best Dutch representatives to the 2008 Olympics.  As Coach Paardenkooper put it, “The best go.”  Until then, it’s anybody’s guess who will be sailing NED I, NED II, and NED III.