U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Sailor Faced Upwind Struggle to Return to Sport

Kevin Hall can appreciate life on the lake again.

After winning the gold medal Monday in sailing’s Laser division at the U.S. Olympic Festival, Hall could smile and say life is good.

It was hell two years ago.

Aside from winning races and trying to return to the top of the sailing world, Hall, 25, also is winning a fight with cancer.

A member of the Ventura Yacht Club, Hall won the International Yacht Racing Union World Youth single-handed boat title at 17. A year later, he won the U.S. Youth double-handed championship. He has been a U.S. Team Race champion four times. At Brown University, he was a three-time All-American.

But during his senior year, Hall learned he had testicular cancer.

He decided to have the cancer removed, rather than have major lymph node removal surgery. If the problem persisted, that operation could be done later.

For a while, life returned to normal.

Hall earned degrees in mathematics and French literature and returned to sailing, even winning the North American Laser Championship in 1991.

But the condition persisted.

The next year, blood tests showed that the cancer might be coming back.

Understandably scared, Hall had his lymph nodes removed.

Fortunately--and unfortunately--the tests on the lymph nodes came up negative. So, in hindsight, the surgery might not have been necessary.

But the tests being negative was the good news.

The bad news came a month later: Cancer showed up in the other testicle, which had to be removed.

“What was I thinking? That it didn’t make any sense,” Hall said. “I had been fortunate and comfortable all my life. I’ve always been in athletics and sailing and I’ve always been real good about my diet. . . . I thought, ‘Why me?’ I mean, that’s a lot to go through at any age. You don’t know if you will live. You do know you’ll never [father] children. That’s a lot to go through at 21.”

Hall said his athletic background helped.

“I was used to fighting for something,” he said. “It turned out that I was fighting for my life.”

That was January 1993, the last time he showed signs of the disease.

Hall took a year off from sailing to heal and to grow in different ways.

“I came to Colorado--I have an aunt who lives out here--and worked in a book shop and was a ski instructor. I wanted to get away from the pressure of living up to my old expectations,” he said.

“In many ways, it was the greatest year of my life--I realized that who I was, was not dependent on how I did in competition.”

But Hall eventually did return to competition. With the idea that he might try competitive sailing again for just a year, he entered a regatta in March, his first since before the surgery.

“I had a lot of apprehension,” he said. “I had visions of being way in the back and not having a good time. But none of that happened.”

In fact, Hall quickly returned to the top, placing first in the North American Championships and winning the 44-boat Laser division of the Alamitos Bay Olympic Classes Regatta.

“I’m not really emotionally attached to the results anymore,” Hall said. “Though victories I maybe enjoy even more, in a different way. Victories are sweet now.”

So is life. Hall became engaged in February to Anne Fenwick, his conditioning trainer. He is a strong candidate to qualify for the 1996 Olympics. Two years of few complications indicate his health is improving.

Hopefully, the cancer and the wind will stay behind him.