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“You haven’t won the race, if in winning the race you have lost the respect of your competitors”*

Posted: Thursday, 08 December, 2016

Older members and followers of Olympic sailing will be sad to hear that Paul Elvstrom died at his home in Hellerup, Denmark, yesterday (7th December) at the age of 88. Not unreasonably dubbed The Great Dane by far too many journalists, Elvstrom was one of the Great Names in sailing history.
He won four consecutive Olympic gold medals: Firefly in 1948 (the London Olympics, sailing in Torbay); Finn in 1952 (Helsinki), 1956 (Melbourne) and 1960 (Rome). Apocryphal or not, the story is told that he would train in his Finn during a snowstorm so that he could learn to read the windshifts. He was reserve for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 (where Keith Musto and Tony Morgan won Silver in the FD) and competed in the Star and Soling fleets in the next two Games without winning a medal. In 1984 and 1988 he competed in the Tornado class with his daughter Trine on the wire.
But if Olympic medals eluded him after those four wins, other victories were plentiful. He won eleven world championships - 505 (2), Finn (2), Snipe (1), Flying Dutchman (1), 5.5 Metre (1), Star (2), and Soling (2) and two Tornado European championships with Trine.
His books are still among the best sailing literature ever written, he founded the eponymous sail and boat building companies and he was a thoroughly nice guy.
*famous quote by Paul Elvstrom.