I love competition and I love training for it, and I still love the game even though not winning breaks my heart.  I hope I’ll get another chance to redeem myself, 2012 is a long ways away, but I can tell you deep inside me, I can’t go out like this, not now, I know I can crack this game.  I know I’ll be training as soon as I get home. I’ll have to sort out priorities, I am getting older, but there is something that always gets stronger my love for the game and my conviction to doing it with all your heart and fear.  I’ll be back, with stronger results and more experience than before, and hopefully I can convince you to give me one last shot at this.  There is no greater feeling, than to be representing our fine country on the world stage, reading every single one of your notes to remind myself to stay strong when things get tough, to take loss with my head up, to learn from this and continue to share what heck of a ride this is.

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I’ve uploaded many of the videos and pictures from the games, I hope you like them..I finally got my 2^nd amendment rights reinstated!

I love you all for such strength you’ve brought, me, and I hope with sharing you the full story you understand how great the feeling is to be an Olympian, and also how hard it is.  I love my life.  It’ll take some time for me to swallow this experience, but I promise I will follow up with each and everyone of you who has sent your cheers. I congratulate Tom and Yin for winning the Gold in the windsurfing men and women. . .

Yours,

Ben Barger

Back in Qingdao it was back to business, the forecast for the first few days was for light winds.  Day 1 brought 8 knots of winds from the seabreeze direction and it was incredibly choppy and noisy with helicopters flying overhead the entire time.  The first race I had a great start, headed upwind with super high intensity crossed back over the rest of the fleet back to the right in around 5^th place and then lost about 5 more when I crossed back left.  When I crossed back left, I had to duck MEX, on port it was close and he protested me, I was like great, not even 10 minutes of racing and I had to do my circle, I did my 360 and then was in about 20^th place, not good.  I pushed hard downwind, but I felt off, I couldn’t reel them back in as I did in training.  So I finished the first race in 21^st out of 36, mid fleet blues.  After the finish MEX said he was going to protest me for not doing a 720..I almost lost it, during the Olympic trials I was protested for not doing a 720 as well..because the actual rule is a 360 penalty turn.  He later figured it out, and apoligzed.  I had to mentally regroup again for the second race.  I went back left and this time I was off on the shift and rounded deep at the top mark, I did my best to catch about 15 people but  at the last mark my footstrap became tangled around the mark, the Beijing 2008 logo had a rope on the bottom of it that tied a twisted knot around my footstrap, I was like you’ve got to be kidding, I had to jump in the water to untangle my board.  By the time I got up it was too late and I was really really frustrated, I had finished worse than some of my worst performances of the season.  Disappointed was an understatement. 

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Luckily my wife Anja was in China, and I moved out of the village the first day and stayed with her and the rest of my family in a hotel.  This helped clear my mind of the beurocracy of the Olympics and focus on racing.  Day 2 wasn’t better the wind was lighter and I was off on the shifts and speed, I couldn’t hold onto the leaders in my speed and got further frustrated and exhausted, it was only day 2 and I was already feeling tired.   I got a tow back to the harbor with the Slovak team as I couldn’t find my coach for the day.  I just wanted to cry on my pillow, I was having a nightmare of a regatta, this is THE regatta and I was sailing bad, worse than my average all season, and everywhere I went on the race course was the wrong way and I was slow.  I couldn’t figure it out, I added pressure to my battens, I changed downhaul, I reshimmed my centerboard, I pumped slower and faster nothing seemed to work like it did in training. 

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Day 3 turned into day 4 then 5 as the next few scheduled race days there wasn’t enough wind to race.  We’d go out then sail back in, races were abandoned, while my results stayed mid fleet.  I knew I had much more in me.  Race 5 finally happened on the 6^th day and we had to wait until really late, the wind was offshore and about 9 knots, a good condition for me.  I rounded the first mark in 15^th, then caught more on the downwind to get to 11^th then back upwind into the top 10, I felt like the time off the last few days helped, then on the last downwind to the finish, the wind shut off then shifted 30 degrees and all the guys behind went right around the leaders.  I went back to the mid twenties and extremely frustrated again. My bad luck continued, momentum was going the wrong way,I wasn’t positive and I was depressed at such high scores so early in the regatta. I knew I had to stay positive, focus on the process and get around my weaknesses.

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Race 6 happened a day later in the middle of stormy weather.  The regatta was behind schedule and there was a large system of low pressure sweeping in the area that made 20+ knots of wind and high seas, great everything the statistics said that wouldn’t happen.  First race I had a great start then slowly drifted back, my speed was way off in the breeze, I later found out it was because my battens were too tight, the new sail was much more sensitive to this than my other sails I used all season.  The rain continued to pour, I couldn’t open both eyes, one was shut and one was lookging around.  Nobody could see the marks as the visibility was terrible because of the rain, I was sure they would abandon the race because of the storms, but no cigar, they decided to race another.  At this point, everybody had that uh oh face, and after we started one after another fell, as the board would get lifted and thrown upside down.  My turn to fell came, I got back up and had to catch up, so I did passed 12 people and got back to my dreaded mid fleet.  Was going decently fast again as I released the battens and was going ok again with speed, but was less than tuned in as I had not focused on this much wind since 4 months ago in Europe.  Still I managed a better day than the second place overall guy and things changed in the regatta a lot with the leaders at that point.

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Two more days pass waiting for the wind, the race committee needed more races in,  we had an early start and it turned out to be great wind, 12-15 knots my sweet spot.  I was in the top ten all race, until, yes I hate saying until, but that was the story of this regatta, until the last downwind, where I had a plastic bag on my fin, I couldn’t shake it off, I got passed slowly by 7 people to finally get it off and finish in the teens, not good but well I took what score I could muster at that point.  By the end of that race it was it was getting light, back to around 6-7 knots, I raced hard, but was again a little slow, little off and finished again deep.  We had one more race scheduled but we had to go in first, I found my ride in with James from the US, who was very helpful.  We took a new approach with the current on the next race, we started late in the day I hit the left side hard and was in 3^rd place and the rest of the fleet way behind when they abandoned the race with the left shift that came in.  I was just like…why why why???!  Give me some love..any.  It was hard to see all my family watch me suffer, I hate losing, it’s hard to talk when things go the other way. I had to remind myself to keep at it, sail like hell and focus on the game.

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Here are some areas I would like to improve:

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1)   speed and technique (with the new gear I wasn’t nearly as in sync as I was in training) Spend more time refining technique to improve efficiency

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2)   do training much more similar to racing (much of my training were in practice races about 15 minutes long, which is less than half the time of a normal race and my technique fell apart towards the end of each race

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3)   have consistent coaching support (at the olympics I had a different coach each day, and their priority was other athletes, this I’ll have to change with US Sailing at the next one)

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4)   sail more carefully when tired, frustrated (it’s easy to feel good when your ahead, but it takes more focus to ensure that you don’t make the little errors when under high stress) This cost me many points in the regatta

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5)   focus much harder on the international fleet and not the US fleet (I spent most of my time training to win the Olympic trials, which is a much smaller event and changes the tactical nature of racing substantially.  I’d use more time focusing on winning the worlds each year, than just winning the trials every 4 years.

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6)   Not be so hard on myself, I have the second best results at the Olympiad since gebis results when he raced last. For my first olympics they are in-line with first time racing Olympians

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7)   25 of the 36 athletes at the olympics were 2-5 time Olympians and the 11 that weren’t were almost all towards the back. So I won that group.

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   Do less all by myself, I am a bit too independent with training sometimes, and need to engage in more training partners and organized training with the worlds best more consistently.

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Luckily my event started on august 11^th and the opening ceremony was of course on august 8^th so it gave me a good amount of time before my event started to recover for the first day.  Much to my surprise only 3 or 4 windsurfers took the journey to Beijing.  Mostly citing possibility of getting sick or being tired, I took the plunge and will savor that experience the rest of my life.  The US sailing team went with team leader, “dean’ and about half of the rest of the sailing team.  We left at 9 AM from Qingdao and went straight to the Beijing Olympic Village. 

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The village was massive with a large sprawl of housing that felt like forever to walk around.  The weather was absolutely oppressive with hotter than florida temperatures and super high humidity and smoggy.  As I mentioned before the Olympic village in Beijing was OK, not nearly as nice as ours in Qingdao, but was cool to be with all the different kinds of athletes from around the world.  Each building was decked out with country flags and murals and rituals from different countries.  Some ,like the  kingdom of Bahrain had inflatable arches and many silly looking pictures of the king everywhere.  Greece had a flag the equivalent size of 5 floors on the side of their building, whilst the US building had only one small 2-3 foot flag on each window of ours.  Seems to me the US team was extremely concerned about being portrayed as “too proud”, my flag on my sail was larger than any I could find in the village identifying us as American. 

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The dining hall in Beijing’s village is massive when we entered we all immediately looked like tourists and got lost from each other.  We ate some and people watched a lot, all kinds of different athletes from everywhere we eating chatting and socializing.  I took some photos with pro cyclist, george hiacappie and US triathlete Hunter Kemper to name a few.  One of our team mates found Amanda Beard and bragged about it for the next two days!  The fun for the day was just getting started. By 5 pm we had to meet together downstairs in complete opening cermonies uniform.  I don’t know if you watched it on TV but that meant suit tie and long pants.and don’t forget 90 degree heat, it was epic hot, I packed my pockets with one camera, one video camera, 2 bottles of water and one cliff bar. 

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We got word at that point our first destination was to the fencing hall to meet with commander and Chief George W Bush.  So off on the busses to the fencing hall and we all organize in the center by sport, each of us would have some time with the president!..very cool indeed.  While waiting the NBA basketball players stroll up and the rest of the teams frenzy to snap photos with them.  Lebron James, Kobe Bryant were the most popular and it was cool to see them with us just relaxing.  After waiting for about an hour, we see some secret service and then we get called back to our teams.  The president sarts off with his speech, which you can see in the video I took, then proceeded to meet and greet the rest of the teams.  He spent ample time with each one, and I was trying to figure out the whole time how to document it, so I just kept the video camera running, and took as many pictures as possible.  My favorite might be the one I couldn’t find anybody to hold the camera and so I “self portraited” myself with the president when he wasn’t quite looking.  He wished me luck and shook my hand in a very firm manner.  After that we snapped photos with the first lady, did I mention she wears a TON of makeup?  Holy cow.  Also talked briefly to his daughter Barbara bush, and she is totally an Olympic fan, and was curious about my sport and training etc..pretty cool. 

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After we met the president we then went to the gymnastics hall which staged all the countries to wait for when they are called for to march in the parade of athletes. By this point we got some boxed lunches that included two cookies, a coke, three pieces of white bread and that’s it.  Kinda rough, I’d say.  In the gymnastics hall it was crazy hot and Sarah and I hung outside until we could handle the hear of the stadium seating inside the hall.  We where amused by the water bottle cooler baracade that the NBA  players had to protect them from crazy fans.  We end up going back to the seating  and we find a seat way in the very front, basically in denmark’s territory.  After about 2 minutes Lebron James sit’s down right next to me, and he’s like what’s up….I was like did Lebron James just sit down right next to me.??!!  We ended up talking for about 10 minutes about the NBA, China, US fans and how cool it was to be an Olympian.  He said were all the same, fighting for the same country enjoying all the experience we could.  Big change from the attitude the US basketball team had in Athens when they completely ignored the rest of the team and made it look silly.  Supposedly in their contracts they had to attend opening ceremonies and participate in all things every other athlete would get without special treatment.  Although they were still staying in the intercontinental hotel in Beijing, so I am sure they weren’t suffering to bad with the village hard beds!  But funny enough after the opening cermonies and everybody is trying to get on a bus, I see Kobe Bryant as well looking for room on a bus as well..pretty amusing to say the least.

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The USA team gets called at about 9:40 and we then hurry up and wait outside, and there are tons of fans outside screaming and yelling with police everywhere blocking off crazy fans.  Was a unique experience to say the least.  While outside we continued to sweat profusely and was sure glad I brought all the water with me.  We were already soaked through on the dress shirt and was trying to fan ourselves so we wouldn’t pass out..luckily we were Olympic athletes. 

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Entering the stadium was awesome, the bright lights blind you and we could here the chant of U-S-A., U-S-A, when we entered the stadium, along with 85K people screaming and yelling.  I won’t ever forget those moments, and I taped them as well!  I found out all the cameras where on the outside of the marching circle so I stood just next to the synchronized swilmmiling team because I knew they’d get Tv time. Sure enough my friends from home sent me TV shots of me waving, what an experience.  After the parade we settled in the center of the stadium and watched the rest of the show.  It was super hot at that point, US teams started getting super tired and kept asking each other for water..I kept mine secret. Hey I was thirsty.  We could feel the heat off the flame when they lit the Olympic caldron, totally amazing  to watch first hand.  Also cool was my dad was able to get an opening ceremony ticket and really enjoyed the moments!

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Each day the windsurfers would do practice races, some pushed hard, some pushed lighter.  The Korean guy was super fast then, and won most of the practice races.  I had some top 2 races as well and felt like my form was on, or atleast in there with the best guys.  I was excited and I would alternate days sailing so that I had max recovery and built a solid peak for the games.  Windsurfing is the only class in the sailing program that allows pumping of the sail in all conditions.  This makes it an endurance event with our heart rates pegged at near max the entire 35-55 minute race.  This requires tons of training in this “tour de sail” board race over 9 days and separates us uniquely from the rest of sailing.  Not to mention windsurfers usually start much younger and end their careers as windsurfers as well.  It’s a very lively and passionate group and there is much team work between foreign teams because the skills take so long to learn.  I checked my start list for the games, 22 out of the 36 were 2^nd or 3^rd time Olympians, making me the minority.  15 of the guys competing were European or world champions and made this fleet one of the most competitive and developed fleets out of the sailing classes.  But I always loved how hard this aspect of sailing was, if your not fit enough, your not smart enough, if your not smooth enough in technique your sluggish in balance or coordination.  Call it many things, but I’d consider myself part gymnast, part staged event cyclist, part sailing and I love each of the daunting challenges it contains.

At 10 AM there was the draw of supplied equipment, where using a lottery ball machine you’d get your board according to the lottery machine.  It was a big contraption and took forever to circulate the ping pong balls and spit out the board assignments.  I got ball number 45, all the windsurfers gasped, that was Gebi’s old sail number. (gebi is the ex-coach I had to beat at the Olympic trials)  Take it how you wanted I looked at it with motivation.

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We were supposed to pick up the equipment that afternoon but it was delayed until the next morning because of a few of the mast tracks had a missing washer, so the poor equipment rep had to take out the mast track out of 75 boards and fix the 2 that were missing the washer.  I was a bit bummed as I planned to sail that day, and had to wait yet again.  All good I went to the gym again, got a solid workout in and was the first one to pick up my gear the next day.

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Having supplied equipment at the Olympic Games was new for the class and hadn’t happened since the1996 games in Atlanta.  They also changed the manufacturing technique on the boards so they would all be closer in tolerance. However it also changed a bit of the feeling of the boards thru the water.  I felt good, but not as fast as the training camp I had last month in China with my then slowest gear.  Just a little off on the way the board cut through the water and the downwind sail feel.  Otherwise everything looked great, I had the stars and stripes all across the 3^rd panel of the sail and it looked fantastic.  My name was stuck on the bottom of it, and was a fantastic feeling to rig it for the first time and say, that’s my sail, that’s for my country and I can’t wait to represent us well!

The Olympic Village in Qingdao is obviously a remote village and one of a few scattered about the country that can’t compete in Beijing.  That worked to our advantage, as the air quality is much higher than that of Beijing, and the village was a brand new intercontinental 5 star hotel.  Much much nicer than the dorm like rooms of the Beijing Olympic Village.  The US team took up the entire 15^th floor, the non-favorite athletes all got a view of the city, whilst the team leader and all the pre-assigned favorites got a complete water view panorama.  I got room 1501, sharing with Scott our Physical Therapist, and the city view.  No complaints, I was stoked that the rooms were so nice and could check out the view from down the hall

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The dining hall was on the third floor of the building and you absolutely needed your accreditation to get entrance, I of course forgot mine the first few mornings! No talking my way out of it.  The food was decent, nothing special, a bit bland and not so flavorful, but was free and had a large variety.  The dining hall was open until 2 AM and you would never go hungary.  When I first arrived I had 2 days until the equipment draw would happen and then I’d be sailing again on the fushan bay in Qingdao.  So I went to the gym the first few days to recover from jet lag and get systems used to China.  

As you all know, I had to win the trials in 2007 to get my ticket to the Beijing Olympics, and this was/is my first Olympics racing and really couldn’t wait to find out how I’d do.  First was a flight from my hometown to San Francisco for processing.  The equipment at the Olympics was almost completely supplied, so my stuff all fit in normal suitcases, albeit a little on the full side.  When I got to the airport check in desk I saw Kenneth and Zach standing in line haggling with the United employee to get all of there bags in for free.  Sure enough United took their bags all free of charge, but then I arrived at the counter, they found somewhere that I was supposed to get reimbursed later on, they found one of my bag was 5 pounds over the limit; add $50 to the bill.  Just two weeks before at the same desk I had 200 pounds of windsurfing equipment that they shockingly allowed on for free.  So goes my first experience of the Olympics!

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Arriving in San Francisco was easy and we all were greeted by USOC staff and were shuttled into a big charter bus that took us to san Jose University for processing.  We made it to san Francisco early, so we went immediately through the processing gauntlet of the USOC.  We had about 6 different stations to go thru, bank of America gave each athlete a debit card with $100 on it, so I already got paid.  We did medical clearances, marketing services, ring fitting, and the all timefavorite team gear issue.  

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Team gear was provided by Nike and Polo Ralgh Lauren and we went into a auditorium size room and picked up about 45 different items, ranging from polo shirts to pants and rain breakers to our opening ceremonies jackets.  Each athlete did their best to try on each article of clothing before it entered your full size shopping cart.  They packed it up neatly in USA ringed bags and then we were off to alterations for the suit and pants.  The alterations guru was a chap from Tampa, with Sew Fast on platt, I am sure many of you have been there and he knew many of you as well. 

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After that we checked into our rooms, which were dorm rooms with 5 individual rooms with two beds a piece.  It was less than epic housing but we were too busy trying on our new clothes to really care about it.  Graham, one of our sailors already started sporting the wide angle baseball hat from nike, along with the sweat pants and V neck sweater vest, humor was going wild with all the possible combinations.  We then had  a very important meeting to attend. Charlie, our 4 time multihull Olympian, immediately started to feel really sick, I should have known something was up.  So for the next two hours we were in a new auditorium having USOC speaker after speaker give us rules and regulations on how to behave and represent team USA in China.   There were strict rules on media and what you could post on your website and when you could etc…basically every sponsor that the USOC and IOC gets, owns you for the next 3 weeks, stripping away your second amendment rights and instead drinking coke and eating Mc Donald’s as one of your best food options.  Also of important note was we weren’t supposed to bring cameras into the opening ceremonies, everybody looked at each other with shock and bewilderment.  We left for the dining hall after that long boring lecture and saw Charlie again, he reassured to the team that they always do that in hopes 1 member of the team will follow all their controls.  Truth is he said, go for it enjoy it record it an share it.  Cool.

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We had our own secluded USOC cafeteria food that was decent, with lot’s of footage playing of the past Olympics on big LCD’s t stare at while eating.  Instead of flying out early the next morning to China like all other sports teams in processing, the US Sailing team put together an event the next day at the St. Francis YC with lot’s of press, special sponsor dinners and everything else you could want in a going away party. But that meant some of our team went out for some drinks, Zach at about midnight brought back some mid 40’s ladies to the dorm and woke up nearly everybody that was trying to sleep.  We then nicknamed him “cougar” for the terrible haul of ladies, the name stuck the rest of the regatta.

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So the following day we got back in the bus and headed to St. Francis YC for the going away party.  We all gave video interviews, lot’s of team pictures and shook hands with all the major players that supported the US Sailing Team it was a fun event that included dinner with 300 guests!  Very cool and a great send off.

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The next day we were back in the airport checking in on the way to China.  During processing I picked up 2 extra bags, so I was a bit humorously concerned United would nickel and dime the entire US delegation.  However this time we had our own travel agent just for athletes and staff and this made it easy to get onto Beijing.  So with a 12 hour flight from san Francisco to Beijing, it was going to be extremely dehydrating as they refuse anything over 3 ounces going through security.  So right next to the gate, the USOC set up a water stand and you could take as many dasani water bottles as you could carry onto the plane, that was a nice touch indeed, and should be available for all people as the airplane is the worst nutritionally place anybody could go on, especially with all those water bottles that look like bombs out there.

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The flight was packed with all kinds of athletes on the flight, from shooting to rowers were on the 747 with the sailing team.  I was quick  to point out that I was a windsurfer on the sailing team, to be a touch cooler! 

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Our arrival in Beijing was greeted by at least a dozen Beijing volunteers and we were ushered to the accreditation issue desk where each of us got a name tag that identified us in all Olympic venues and also our entrance Visa.  It was the only time I have visited China and I didn’t need to get a visa a month before while in the states.  Stu, one of our sailors somehow wasn’t in the credential system so arguments ensued on what to do with him, but the security relented and let him into the country.  Next was picking up our baggage and then going to check back in for our short leg to Qingdao, the city where our sailing takes place.  Somehow they decided we wouldn’t be able to make the next flight at 4 PM that was over 2 hours away so they put us on the 8PM flight, much to everybody’s unhappiness. So we all spli our time at two restaurants, Kenny G’s or Burger King.  Both food was fairy gnarly and the jet lag was seeping into everyone’s bones at that time.  So we took turns hearing different stories until we all fell asleep at the gate, waking up later that evening, then again when arriving in Qingdao.  After about 34 hours of travel time we made it to the Olympic Village and collapsed on bed and didn’t move for more than 10 hours.  Did I mention I hate Jet lag?  If there is something that drives me mad about traveling it’s messing up your sleep, eating, digestive, thought and metabolism for over a week to adjust to the 12 hour time change, but going to china is much better than coming back from China.

Yes I am smiling… fulfilled “part” of my biggest dream, being an Olympian is fantastic

Hello all, I just opened my computer back up after a long hard fight in the Olympics…I am making the finishing touches on my updates on the Olympics and promise you to get them out in the next day.  Thank you all for so much support and I look forward to seeing each of you very soon! Yours, Ben

For as long as I can remember there has been the fire deep inside of me to compete at the Olympic Games.  I have had a long arduous journey there, one that is better to share and better to learn from.  There will be no what if’s or maybe’s in a few days, finally I get to taste the competition at the worlds biggest sporting event.  Memories flood my mind of all those days training like a fool, just going for it mostly alone, with little knowledge of exactly where it would bring me.  So here I am at the Olympic Village, writing this on my Olympic Village bed, contemplating the exact feeling that I’ll be zoning in on for the first race on august 11th. I could be the samurai, about to use my sword in the fight of my life.  I could be the bull fighter in the dust of the arena staring down the bull that is charging with his horns down. I can literally taste the intensity of the competition, and I will savor these moments for a lifetime.I have one focus and that is to win, I know that will be difficult, I must be quick, decisive and calculated.  What is about to take place I know will be life changing, something I’ve waited the majority of my life to complete. Something I could have never done alone, and I’ll be thinking of everyone of you who stepped up the past 15 years to support this bigger than life goal and wholeheartedly thank you.  I hope to continue your legacy through my racing and into the next chapter; an Olympic Champion.  I promise you I won’t give up the following few weeks, I’ll keep my head down and do the performance of my lifetime.  It might be about the journey at the end, but right now its about winning and doing whatever it takes to win the gold, and this makes me smile larger than life.  I know I have prepared for this day, not any other for more than half my life and I can assure you, I trained to medal, not finish mid fleet or be an Olympic tourist.  This is competitive bliss for me, focused so intently, I feel like I finally “fit in” for the first time of my life.Thank God.  Thank my wife, Anja for always believing and loving me no matter how hard it’s been. Thank my family, and thank you because we’ve made it together.   So now lets enjoy this ride and let the games begin. Look for me in the opening ceremonies tomorrow, I’ll be waving big!Stay tuned to bentobeijing.com for my updates and nbcolympics.com for more general ones.  Godspeed,Ben