WHOLE SAIL CHANGES : Jolly, Jewell Make Strong Effort--Win Gold in 470 Class

There’s a new message on Lydia Jewell’s answering machine in Sherman Oaks:

“Yaaa- hoo! You have reached the gold-medal household . . . . If you’ll leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you as fast as a 470 can beat the world.”

Lydia Jewell is the mother of Lynne Jewell, who with Allison Jolly dominated the women’s 470 class in winning America’s only gold medal in Olympic sailing. Lynne Jewell cringed the first time she called home and heard the message.

“I can’t believe she did that,” Lynne said. “I’ll tell you, I’m really embarrassed.”

That wasn’t all. Last Sunday, there was a parade in Jewell’s adopted hometown of Plymouth, Mass. Next Tuesday, she and Jolly will join about 500 other Olympic athletes in a visit to the White House.

“I’m really exhausted,” Jewell said. “I’ve been out until midnight every night. I can’t handle it anymore. I guess that’s a part of it. The Plymouth Yacht Club has been one of my biggest supporters. The whole town is loony.”

But although the post-Olympic swirl has been dazzling for Jolly, the skipper, and Jewell, the crew member, only a few months before the Games they hardly looked like golden girls.

Honored as U.S. yachtswomen of the year in 1976 and 1980, respectively, they were among the favorites to represent this country when it was determined that women would have their own class in the ’88 Olympics.

But then, while other top U.S. contenders who made up the official “U.S. team,” with United States Yacht Racing Union funding, sailed and traveled the world in a pod, Jolly and Jewell decided to go their own way and all but faded from sight.

Jewell had recalled an offhand remark by Dave Ullman, the Newport Beach sail maker who is a former 3-time world 470 champion.

“He and a few of the guys mentioned that the big difference (between men and women sailors) was the strength-to-weight ratio,” Jewell said. “Allison picked up on that and said that was something people hear but haven’t done anything about.”

Their coach, sail maker Bill Shore of Newport, R.I., who also is Jewell’s fiance, agreed and advised them to follow a different course: Stay home, ride bikes, work out in a gym, sail their little 15-foot boat virtually every day and hone their skills by competing against men in Snipe dinghies, whose demands and characteristics are similar to a 470’s.

Jewell said: “It was interesting that the stronger I got, a lot easier certain maneuvers became.”

And as they got stronger, they became more confident, an attitude that served them well in the ferocious conditions on Suyong Bay in Pusan, South Korea.

“I think we both really love heavy-air sailing,” Jewell said.

Some of the other Olympic sailors, pounded by the steep chop and watching other boats disappear in the giant swells, felt otherwise.

“Oh, yeah,” Jolly said, “especially in the women’s group--the whole Asian quadrant, with the exception of the Japanese. The Korean girls didn’t even swim. How can you expect them to go out in that kind of wind? You have to feel comfortable with the water in those kinds of conditions.

“There were, clearly, some non-sailors out there. There were people that didn’t even make it to the starting line. They’d just turn around and go back in. We felt prepared for those conditions. We were pretty confident that if it was survival-type stuff, we would be all right.”

In the final race, they also proved they were mentally tough. They needed to place only 14th or better to win the gold and were sailing comfortably and cautiously in third when a small wire broke at the top of their jib.

“We came flying off one wave and it just shattered,” Jolly said. “The jib just fell down in slow motion. After 5 minutes it was a fourth of the way down, and we knew we wouldn’t even finish that way, so we took it down completely.”

Added Jewell: “Allison said, ‘There goes the gold,’ but I said, ‘We’ve got to fight!’--and we are fighters.”

So while Jolly steered through the slop under main sail only, Jewell found a small piece of spare twine in the boat and in 5 minutes effected a repair that enabled them to rehoist the jib.

They had dropped to 15th but moved back to ninth and finished the series well ahead of world champions Marit Soderstrom and Birgitta Bengtsson of Sweden.

Jolly, 32, grew up in Florida but moved to California 8 years ago with her husband Mark Elliot, who has a computer business. They will be moving to Long Beach next month to be closer to their sailing.

Jewell, 29, is a special-education teacher who grew up in the San Fernando Valley but moved to Plymouth 10 years ago. She and Shore are planning to be married next May 20.

“I’m focusing on tying up all the loose ends and starting a new life,” Jewell said.

But she isn’t sure she and Jolly are ready to pass the torch.

“I’ve always said that if she wanted to defend the championship, I wouldn’t mind doing it with her,” Jewell said. “Bill (Shore) would want me to try the single-handed event, but I would do that first.”

In the 1992 Olympics at Barcelona, two women’s classes will be added, single-handed dinghy and sailboard.

“We both feel that the U.S. has been strong in women’s sailing, but it’s usually the same group that’s been around for quite a while,” Jewell said. “That whole group pushed Allison and me over. Young people should model (themselves) after the whole group. We’re just the figureheads. A lot of people there have incredible track records.”

Jewell also is active as a member of the USYRU’s women’s committee and as a delegate to the International Yacht Racing Union women’s committee. Before the Olympics she was called to testify before the IYRU presidential board of directors on the athletes’ needs at Pusan, a distinction a longtime delegate said he had never enjoyed.

Then, Jewell and Jolly upstaged the American men in the Olympics.

At Long Beach in ‘84, the U.S. men won three golds and four silvers in the seven classes. In those same seven classes this time, apart from the new women’s class, the count was two silver medals and two bronze--better than any other country but disappointing in the light of what might have been.

There were two obvious differences this time: no home advantage, and the presence of Eastern Bloc sailors. The East German crew beat San Francisco’s John Kostecki out of a gold in soling, and a Soviet boat edged Long Beach’s John Shadden for the silver in men’s 470.

Also, Mark Reynolds of San Diego and Hal Haenel of Hollywood lost their chance for a gold in star when their mast fell down in the final race.

“I felt our team was an exceptionally strong team,” said Jewell, who saw only one flaw in the program.

“It’s too bad that USYRU can’t afford a full, year-round coaching program that can work with the individuals. . . . Right now we don’t have the (resources) but we do have the proof, at least in our campaign, that it does work.”

Jewell gave credit to Shore, whom she and Jolly worked with throughout their campaign. “He walked us through right to the end,” she said.

Jolly said the Eastern Bloc sailors “have coaches year-round. We get ‘em 2 months before.”

Shadden said: “We had to beg the U.S. Olympic Committee to get us a coach 6 months before the Games. It’s not a lot of money.”

The success of Jolly and Jewell after training outside the official U.S. Sailing Team program also raised some questions about the Olympic Yachting Committee’s approach to financing only a select few sailors and training them in a group.

On the other hand, some classes have been criticized for not sharing information. It can’t be both ways, and no doubt USYRU will review its policy before 1992.

Jewell and Jolly don’t blame Andy Kostanecki, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Yachting Committee for the ’88 Games. With the funds available, they felt he probably did better than could be expected.

“Andy tried really hard,” Jewell said. “He had meetings over there every morning with all the coaches to make sure everybody’s program was getting the upmost attention.”

Jolly also explained how Kostanecki tried to mitigate an unsatisfactory housing situation by moving the team out of the Pusan Olympic Village, a 15-story building that she described as Spartan, and into the Hyatt Hotel.

“We felt so fortunate that Andy stuck by his guns and let us stay in the Hyatt,” Jolly said. “He had to pay for the village accommodations, also, and then had to get the money for the Hyatt. But it was important for us to have an American-type place, (with) refrigerators in the rooms and other things we’re used to.

“We were headlines in the local paper: ‘The Americans refuse to stay in the village.’

“It looked like it was going to get nasty, but we quickly tried to (explain) that we had Seagram’s sending over family members, and most people had family members that were paying their own way, and they were absolutely not allowed in the Olympic Village--not to eat meals, not to visit, none of it. So it would have been a waste, if they couldn’t spend time with us.

” . . . The additional bonus that we weren’t spreading was that the food was better, more American.

“Occasionally, some of us would go over (to the village) for free meals--we’d already paid for it all--just to show that we weren’t snubbing them. Later on, some of the East German team moved into a hotel and some of the British team moved out (of the village).”

The unknown quantity of Olympic sailing were the Soviets, who placed third in the women’s 470 fleet, second in men’s 470 and around the middle of the other classes. Jolly was surprised.

“Very much,” she said. “We saw them in Kiel (West Germany) last year and they could hardly sail. For them to have made that kind of strides--but I’m sure people said the same thing about us.

“When they set goals they are very capable of achieving them. We were parked right next to the Soviet women, and the morning of the fourth race Andy Kostanecki said, half-jokingly, ‘Watch out for the Soviets. I talked to their team leader and he gave them all a serious lecture last night and said he was going to pack ‘em up and send ‘em home if they didn’t start performing.’

“That very day on the Bravo course, which had the Finn and the 470 men and women, the Soviets won all three divisions.”

The Soviets got the message, but Jewell’s mom has a better one.