THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310661
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SERIES: Olympics '96
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
From Atlanta
LENGTH: 50 lines
After weeks of training in Savannah, Ga., and 10 Olympic races, former Old Dominion sailor Charlie Ogletree was right where he'd always planned to be entering the final race - in position to win a medal.
The field was cluttered with five teams within six points of them, but Ogletree and his partner in the Tornado division, John Lovell, started Tuesday's final race in third place, poised for the bronze.
They never came close to holding on.
The Ogletree-Lovell crew drifted across the finish line in 12th place, matching their worst effort of the entire regatta, and ended the Olympics in eighth place.
``We had to just sail a good race,'' a disappointed Ogletree said. ``All we had to do was stay near the French guy or the Brazilian guy, but we didn't do either.''
In other words, a fifth-place finish would have been enough for the Americans to secure the bronze. Instead, Ogletree and Lovell clocked 1 hour, 8 minutes and 34 seconds, two minutes behind the Brazilian team that finished third in the race and won bronze.
Australia, which began the day in second place, won the final race to claim the silver medal. Spain's team clinched the gold Monday and did not race Tuesday.
On Monday, Ogletree, 28, a former All-American at ODU, and Lovell won one of the day's two races to bolt up to third place. It was the only victory they managed on the course on which they won the Olympic Trials to become the sole U.S. entrants in Tornado.
Unusually light winds, Ogletree said, conspired against them Tuesday.
The team performed best, he said, when the winds on Savannah's Wassaw Sound reached their normal 12 to 15 knots. Ogletree and Lovell were prepared for those conditions, which were forecast for Tuesday, but the wind got up to only about eight knots and the sailors failed to adjust properly, Ogletree said.
``It was just a light, fluky race. Real shifty,'' said Ogletree, a native North Carolinian who works for a sailmaker near Houston. ``I had a good feeling going into today. Our goal all along was to have a shot at a medal in the last few days.''
He has four years to wait for another try. That is, if Ogletree decides he's got four more years of effort within him.
``Of course I think about it,'' Ogletree said of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. But he can't say if he'll act upon the thought.
``I don't know,'' he said. ``Maybe. Ask me in a year.'' by CNB