Sarah Mergenthaler, ’01, sails for gold in the Beijing Olympics.
Sarah Mergenthaler, ’01, has a thing about goals. She lives to achieve them. In high school, she was the first girl in New Jersey to kick a field goal in a varsity football game. At Richmond, she threw the javelin farther than any woman in school history.
But six years ago, Mergenthaler aimed high and missed.
She had quit a finance job in New York City to immerse herself in 470-class sailing. She made it to the U.S. Olympic Trials with teammate Amanda Clark, but they finished second by only three points.
“In sailing, that’s the equivalent of a basket at the buzzer,” Mergenthaler explains. They were disappointed, but they immediately knew what they had to do. As they sailed to shore, they looked at each other with dead-serious expressions and said, “2008.” It was not a question. It was a commitment.
Soccer style
Mergenthaler began sailing at age 7, but growing up in Colts Neck, N.J., she was less involved in the sport than her three siblings.
“She was more of a social sailor,” recalls her father, Bill Mergenthaler. Soccer was her game.
Mergenthaler was an all-state soccer player at Marlboro High School, where she lettered in four other varsity sports—cross-country, track, basketball, and football. Her football career started with trash talk in the weight room.
“Soccer people can’t kick footballs,” the football players insisted.
“I think we can,” she shot back.
So they headed out to the football field, and Mergenthaler kicked the ball through the uprights from 15 yards, then 20 yards, then 25 yards, then 30 yards.
She earned a spot on the football team and made headlines across the country. In The New York Times, head coach Larry Zdilla said, “Sarah is as good a kicker as I’ve had in 24 years of coaching.”
Richmond women’s soccer coach Peter Albright recruited Mergenthaler, and she immediately fell in love with the UR campus.
The academics challenged her, but she completed a double major in sport management and business administration. She also won the Fannie Crenshaw Scholarship for excellence in the classroom and in sports.
Mergenthaler approached academics like she did athletics, recalls Dr. Donald Pate, former chair of Richmond’s health and sport science department. “Sarah hated to lose.” She was a two-time conference champion in the javelin, shattering the 20-year school record in 2001. Mergenthaler played on UR’s nationally ranked soccer team, but she was not the star. She had to work hard just to earn playing time.
“What I took from all the areas of life at Richmond—academic, social, and athletics—is that sometimes you are really rewarded for just putting your head down and working hard,” she says.
Olympic dream
Mergenthaler’s Olympic dream began with a phone call from her father in 2002. Amanda Clark, an acquaintance from her “social sailing” days, was looking for a 470-class partner to make a run at the 2004 Olympics.
“Do you know anyone who might be interested?” Bill Mergenthaler asked.
Sarah knew he was not referring to her. She had never been on a 470 boat, a two-person dinghy that is 470 centimeters (about 15 feet) long. She had never operated a trapeze and harness, the equipment sailors use to hang precariously over the edge of a 470.
“He never thought I would think of doing anything like that,” Sarah recalls. In fact, she never had considered it, so she was a bit surprised to hear herself say, “Wow! I’d really like to.”
Mergenthaler called Clark and they talked about going to the Olympics. Mergenthaler was hooked. Now all she had to do was master the 470, an intimidating boat that demands strength, finesse, and experience.
“I had my first sail in a 470 and just fell in love with it,” Mergenthaler recalls. “It was hard. I had blisters on my hands and was sore in places where I had never been sore before. You know, I played college soccer and I lift weights and stay in shape ... but this was a different kind of physical application.”
After their loss in the 2004 Olympic Trials, Mergenthaler and Clark trained and sailed together until they and their boat were one.
At the 2008 trials, they competed in 15 grueling races over nine days and won the women’s fleet by a comfortable 14 points. In a photograph taken after the final race, Mergenthaler holds her fist high in the air.
“I think about that picture and it gives me goose bumps,” she says. “It was pure joy. We were so happy. It was almost an out-of-body experience.”
Back on shore, Mergenthaler started sending text messages to family members and friends, including former UR teammate Courtney Ficken, ’01.
“Tears of joy streamed down my face when it was confirmed,” Ficken recalls. “It was an overwhelming experience as a best friend.”
Coach Albright was pleased but not surprised. “She had some physical gifts and was a good player, but wasn’t an exceptional soccer player,” he says. “But she had an exceptional mind and will, and she would never, ever consider backing down. … She just will not allow herself to be second in anything.”
Full-time job
Sailing is a full-time job for Mergenthaler, who spends only a few weeks each year at the New York condo she shares with her husband, Brian Chin.
In April, Mergenthaler and Clark finished second in the women’s division of the 470 International Spring Cup in Sanary-sur-Mer, France.
“He is super-understanding,” Mergenthaler says. “Understanding is an understatement, I can’t even pick the word.”
The couple had dated on and off since high school, and they tied the knot last summer in the boatyard behind her parents’ house. Mergenthaler was able to fit the ceremony into her schedule, but it was tough.
“I didn’t want it anywhere near the Olympic Trials,” she recalls, “and I didn’t want it anywhere near the Olympics.”
To prepare for the Olympics (Aug. 8–24) Mergenthaler and Clark are competing in regattas around the world. They have four boats, a coach in Australia, a trainer, a nutritionist, and a sports psychologist. Their $350,000 annual budget comes from the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. National Sailing Team, corporate sponsors, yacht clubs, and coaching fees. Mergenthaler handles logistics, including travel plans and shipping boats.
“I’m more type A and she’s more type B,” Mergenthaler says. Clark is very quiet and introverted on race day mornings, while Mergenthaler pumps herself up by jumping and shouting. “I would slam myself against the locker if we had one,” she says.
They complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, Bill Mergenthaler observes. One of Sarah’s strengths is the ability to remain positive no matter what happens in a race. “It comes from many years of competing.” It is the ability to “always deal with what you have in front of you right now.”
Ultimate goal
Dead ahead lies their ultimate goal, an Olympic gold medal. They are ranked fifth in the world, and they believe they can win.
Mergenthaler always performed best in the big meets or games, recalls Pate, her former UR advisor. “If she doesn’t do extremely well in [the Olympics], that will surprise me.”
But 470 sailing is unpredictable. Fickle winds and erratic currents can determine the winner of any given race, and the Olympic regatta (with 11 races) will be held in a tough venue, a coastal city 430 miles east of Beijing. The prevailing winds there are very light—under 7 knots—and the currents are strong.
“It’s going to be a very difficult regatta to be consistent in,” Mergenthaler explains. “We’ve had races there and rounded the top mark in first place and the next mark in second-to-last because we guessed wrong on the current.”
Mergenthaler says if they win a medal, she will wear it for two months straight. And if they don’t?
“I’m not even thinking about what happens on Aug. 25 after the closing ceremony,” Mergenthaler says. “Because if we’re not completely focused, we’re not giving it everything we’ve got.”
Pamela Babcock is a freelance writer based in the New York City area.
Send comments about this story to krhodes@richmond.edu.
