This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
03/24/2011 12:00 AMAlice Manard Leonard has sailed all over the world. In the past year, she and her team placed first at races in St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands and St. Petersburg, Florida, and the U.S. Women's Match Racing Championship in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The team also placed fifth in the ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championship in Newport, Rhode Island, and placed in races in Germany and England. The team hopes to return to England for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
Alice is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana and began sailing at a young age.
"My parents got into sailing and they needed something for the kids to do while they were out, so my sister and I went to sailing camp," recounts Alice. "When it was time to make a college decision, I knew that I wanted to go somewhere to sail."
Alice decided on Stanford University, where she was captain of the sailing team from 1994 to 1997. She was on the U.S. Sailing Team AlphaGraphics from 1998 to 2001, then 2005 to 2006, before returning in 2009. Alice served as sailing coach at the College of Charleston in South Carolina before leaving to focus on her own competitive sailing career.
The U.S. Sailing Team AlphaGraphics is managed by the United States Sailing Association and the Olympic Sailing Committee. AlphaGraphics, a printing company, is the team's official sponsor. The team governs sailing events and members compete for a bid to the Olympics. Alice placed second in the Olympic trials for the 2000 games.
Alice and her teammates, Genny Tulloch and Jenn Chamberlin, compete in women's match-racing. In match-racing, boats compete 1-on-1 in short races that last 15 to 20 minutes and are close to shore. Teams can race anywhere from five to more than 13 times in a day. Match-racing events start out in a round-robin format before teams are seeded into an elimination tournament.
Alice grew up sailing with Tulloch and met Chamberlain when she coached against her college team, St. Mary's of Maryland. Alice is forward crew, Tulloch is the skipper, and Chamberlain is the main and spinnaker trimmer. The team, which is based in Miami, spent last week training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Twice a year the team travels to the facility to learn physical training techniques.
"It's not really that much different than strength training for other sports," says Alice of her exercise program. "A lot of exercises for agility, core strength, and upper-body strength."
Alice and her team will next compete in France in April, then the Netherlands in May. Alice spends half of her time traveling. She moved to East Haven in August when she married her husband, Zack Leonard.
Leonard is the head sailing coach at Yale. Not surprisingly, he and Alice met on the sailing circuit and raced together. When they are not training or coaching, Alice and her husband sail around New England.
Alice earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and worked in business before coaching at Charleston. While she may go back, sailing is her business right now.
"I left work and coaching to sail full time," she says. "We're a new team compared to many of the other teams, so we have a lot of work to do. Our goal is to keep qualifying for World Cup events, and then to qualify for the Olympics."