SAN DIEGO—Three-time Olympians and Athens silver medalists John Lovell of New Orleans and Charlie Ogletree of Kemah, Tex., head the Tornado catamaran fleet that leads off US Olympic Trials West Friday with three autumn weekends of US Sailing Olympic Pre-Trial events in Southern California.

A year from now the same venues in San Diego, Newport Beach, Long Beach and Marina del Rey will host the formal Olympic Trials to select the one boat in eight of the 11 classes that will represent the United States in the 2008 Olympic sailing at Qingdao, China in 2008.

Pre-Trials for the other three Olympic classes—Laser, Laser Radial and Yngling, plus 2.4mR, Sonar and SKUD-18 for disabled sailors—are scheduled at Newport, R.I. this weekend.

San Diego Yacht Club will host the Tornados that are scheduled to sail seven races over Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting at noon each day, conditions permitting. Their race course will be on the open ocean three miles south of the city in the area known as Coronado Roads.

Lovell (pictured left) and Ogletree (right) celebrated their 39th birthdays Wednesday—Lovell is two hours older—by claiming their record 10th and fourth consecutive U.S. National title in the class since 1993. Although Enrique Figueroa and crew Jorge Hernandez of Puerto Rico finished on top with five first places in eight races, they were not eligible for the U.S. championship. (Complete results and photos at http://www.sdyc.org/raceinfo/results06/tornadoNatsFinal_res.htm)

Winds were seldom stronger than single digits, but that was fine with Lovell and Ogletree. They recently placed fourth in the Good Luck Beijing-Qingdao International Regatta, an Olympic test event where the sailing will be contested in 2008 when they hope to be competing in their fourth Olympics.

Asked which venue of all they have sailed in around the world compares best to Qingdao, Ogletree said, “San Diego. It’s light here, and there’s some swell and some current. It’s not as shifty here. Qingdao has bigger shifts. But we know we need to spend a lot of time between now and the Olympics working on light air, so we’ll definitely spend some time here.”

Lovell and Ogletree have been sailing together for 13 years, longer than some marriages last.

“That’s what our wives say,” Ogletree said. “The key is we have a good relationship on the water, and off the water we spend a lot of time together and are really good friends.”

Next weekend (Oct. 20-22) the 49ers will be at Southwestern YC in San Diego, the Finns at Newport Harbor YC and the Stars at California YC in Marina del Rey. The spectacle will finish Oct. 26-29 with four days of racing for the men’s and women’s 470s at the US Sailing Center in Long Beach and the men’s and women’s RS:X—the new Olympic sailboard—just down the street at Alamitos Bay YC.

The fleets generally will be small by small-boat norms, which is the nature of Olympic Trials. US Sailing ranks the country’s Olympic hopefuls by competitive success, and five of the top American Tornados will be racing at San Diego.

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