(Pusan, South Korea)- The 2014 Asian Games are being hosted by South
Korea this coming September. It’s an enormous event where thousands of
athletes from across Asia participate in track & field events as
well as in yachting. The yachting portion of the games includes
dinghies, catamarans as well as keelboats. The J/80 was again chosen as
the principal one-design keelboat for the Asian Games. Jim Johnstone
from J/Boats Asia reports on the J/80s and the South Korean National
Team:“I just finished doing the final inspection of the first J/80's that will be heading to Korea for the Asian Games this September. There are six boats on order that will ship in July. Production at Red Dragon in Xiamen, China is going quite well at the moment and the overall quality of the boats is excellent.
I
was only in Korea for one day of training with the Korean National
sailing team. The team consists of ten of their top sailors, most of
them are very experienced 470 class veterans. On-the-water practice was
short but it was helpful to go out and discuss weight movement, penalty
turns upwind and downwind, spinnaker setting techniques, boat
preparation and preventative maintenance. Overall the team was pleased
with the training program and they hope to practice hard in the coming
months before the event. We then went off to have an excellent
Korean-style meeting with the head of the Club, Andy Ra (J/Boats Dealer
in Korea) and the sailing team. I wish them all luck in the upcoming
Asian Games and they are all very excited to see and start sailing the
new J/80's. I’ll be attending the event in September and will give a
sailing update then.”
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