Olympic Goals, Budgets and Reality

Setting my sights on the Olympic Games and winning a Gold Medal in Rio for the USA is an ambitious and aggressive goal, but it is one that I am committed to achieving. This includes a lot of hard work, constant training and growth beyond even my imagination at this point in my campaign, but it is all necessary and a challenge that I look forward to every day.

When I first decided to put together a campaign for the Olympics, I met with past Olympians, coaches and advisors to develop a plan on how I could become the best of the best and ultimately win Olympic Gold for the USA at Rio.  I learned a tremendous amount from these conversations, not the least of which is that to be an Olympic champion requires total dedication, focus and commitment to your own success.  This was an exciting moment for me because I knew that this is exactly where I am in my life and I am ready to dedicate my life to achieving my goal.

With this information in hand, I sat down to create a budget for my campaign.  Understanding that my goal is not to be the best sailor in my local fleet, not the best sailor in the country and not even to just be the best athlete in the world, but to be an Olympic champion, I sat down and looked at the opportunity to achieve this was real and only required a solid plan to achieve it.  I realized it would take training with the top coaches in the world, maintaining my equipment at its optimal competitive level, training in the gym to keep myself in optimal form and competing in events that would test my development along the way.  This is all expensive.  In fact, when I created the budget (with the support of those that were advising me from their experience) I found that it would cost just over half a million dollars a year to achieve my goal of Olympic Gold.

Talking with friends and supporters, I realized that raising funds at this level would be difficult and take a great deal of time from my training and so I looked at my plan and started to remove some of the expenses to give me a “good shot” at winning the US Olympic Trials. Yes, this was a more reasonable number when looking at fundraising and while it still included great coaching, it reduced the access to the worlds top coaches, minimized the number of days training in top competitive venues and reduced the frequency of replacement of equipment that would keep me performing at the top of my game.  It could work but was no guarantee of victory.

I have been following the “modified plan” for the past several months, keeping my expenses as low as possible while training and staying focused on raising funds I needed along the way.

Today I realized that my goal is not to be pretty good.  My goal is not to have a good shot at winning the US Trials.  My goal is to be an Olympic Gold Medalist.  To win the Games in Rio! I know that raising over $500 Thousand each year is going to be difficult and take a lot of my training time to do this, but I want to win.  To be an Olympic Champion is my goal and that is what I need to do.  I am going back to my original training plan, going to implement the steps that my advisors helped me develop to put everything in place to give the the best chance to win Gold.

I am focused, I am dedicated, I am ready for the hard work and and going to give it my all to be that champion. I will come home from Rio in 2016 to share my victory with the people that have helped me achieve it and then I will encourage others to not accept less than what it takes to be the best!

I am “in it to win it”, and I am going to give it my all to make it happen.  I am going to go out and raise the money I need to train with the best coaches and get the training program I need to be able to win in Rio.  $500k is a lot of money to raise each year, but I know I can do it.  With your help, support, encouragement (and referrals) I can raise the money, train hard and win Gold in Rio!

If you can, please help support my campaign. Just as important, if you know anyone or any company that can donate to my successful pursuit of Gold in Rio, please send me their phone number and I will call them to tell them why I am going to achieve my goal and how their support will make it happen! My phone number is 216-210-3598. Thank you!