SAILING AT THE PAN AM GAMES#

Name a sport that looks more different than how it did at the beginning of the modern Olympic Games in 1900. Welcome to the fastest sport at the Pan American Games and the Olympic Games, defying everything that likely comes to mind when you think of “sailing” at speeds of 45 mph. With a fully gender-equal slate of disciplines, sailing has something for all fans of wind sports coming up in Marseille from traditional ILCAs and 470s to flying X Games-esque windsurfers and kiteboards.

Historically dominant in Olympic sailing, the United States was only recently surpassed at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 for most medals and is on the hunt to return to the top. The epic athletes working to make it happen include: 22-year-old and six-time consecutive Kiteboarding World Champion Daniela Moroz making her debut as a favorite for the gold medal and Stu McNay, a four-time Olympian gunning for a spot on the podium alongside Tokyo Olympian Lara Dallman-Weiss.

Powered by wind and driven by dreams, the Team USA sailors are a group to watch as they give it their all for medal victory at the Pan American Games Santiago 2023 and the Olympic Games Paris 2024, and will enter the Games as underdogs for the first time in history.
For Olympic classes, The 2023 Pan American Games is the second opportunity (following the 2023 Sailing World Championships in The Netherlands) for the United States to qualify for berths at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Read more about country qualification here. 
For non-Olympic classes (Snipe, Lightning, Sunfish), The Pan American Games is one of the top international honors in each respective class.

• Daniela Moroz — 22-year-old Daniela Moroz who competes in the women’s formula kite discipline, is a six-time consecutive world champion in her discipline. She grew up well-rounded in a variety of sports but gravitated to kiteboarding and won her first world championship at the age of 14.
  
• Stephanie Roble & Maggie Shea — Consistently a top-performing team internationally in the 49er FX, this duo of childhood rivals turned inseparable teammates were the underdogs coming into Tokyo Team Trials. Set up against seasoned Olympians, and the pair won on a tiebreaker to represent the U.S. in Japan. They fell short of their goal at their first Olympic Games in Tokyo and are back to fight for medals.
  
• Ian Barrows & Hans Henken — An island boy and a rocket scientist, respectively, joined forces for the Paris 2024 Team Trials and are currently just ahead of Mollerus and MacDiarmid in the 49er standings. Barrows and Henken represented the U.S. at the Paris test tvent in Marseille and will sail at the Pan American Games. Their personalities complement each other for what may seem like an unlikely pairing, but they’re an absolute force on the water.