The flotilla of bateaux mouches sailing the Seine with 7,000 Olympians aboard smiling and waving in the rain is but a fond memory a week later. The same for the masked torch bearer scampering along rooftops, icons Lady Gaga and Celine Dion performing, and daredevil dancers swaying atop poles during the impressive Opening Ceremonies.
The Paris Olympics are well underway with athletes in 32 sports chasing the thrill of victory and gold, silver and bronze medals. Three Rhode Islanders — sailor Stu McNay from Barrington, rower Emily Kallfelz from Jamestown and marathoner Emily Sisson, a part-time Providence resident — are among them. So is URI women’s basketball coach Tammi Reiss, an assistant coach with the USA Women’s 3×3 basketball team.
Stu McNay is the veteran of the US Sailing team as well as the Rhody Trio. He turns 43 today, Aug. 1, and is sailing in his fifth Olympics, tying the record for US Sailing.
A professional sailor, McNay has a resume as long as the mast on his racing dinghy. He was a two-time All-America at Yale; won consecutive national championships in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and has raced in 22 World Championships, finishing fifth in 2014 and 2021.
He made his Olympics debut at Beijing in 2008 and finished 13th. He was 14th at London in 2012, 4th at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, and 9th at Tokyo in 2021, the best finish among the Americans and, McNay thought at the time, his final Olympic games.
Tomorrow, Aug, 2, McNay will begin a new Olympics experience: mixed crew. Olympics organizers adopted mixed crew to promote equality on the water. Gender parity is among their goals.McNay’s partner is Lara Dallman-Weiss from Shoreview, Minn. She raced at Tokyo three years ago and contacted him after those Games about forming a team. They raced together last year and qualified for the Olympics in January.
They are competing in the 470 dinghy class. When I imagine sailboat racing, I think of the America’s Cup, or Newport to Bermuda or the Volvo Ocean Race: big boats, big sails, lots of crew. The 470 is a 15-foot, 5-inch double-handed racing machine that has been an Olympic class since 1976. Women joined the fun in 1988. The boat demands technical expertise and teamwork between the skipper at the helm and the one-person crew, who can spend much of the time hiking, or stretched out from the side of the boat — attached by harness to a cable affixed high on the mast. The idea is to keep the hull flat on the water’s surface and to avoid capsizing.Small boats like the 470 sail and race on Narragansett Bay all the time.
Despite his long career in racing – he is an assistant co-ed sailing coach at Brown as well – McNay is approaching his fifth Olympics with a strong sense of gratitude and purpose. He appreciates the sacrifices his wife Tanya and their children Lexi and Sammy make so he can sail.
“My goals are more personal. I’d like to put forth a performance I’m proud of,” he said before leaving for France.“While I’ve raced in this class of boat for a long time, the format is new to me. Whether it’s the change in gender or the change in teammate, I’m not sure, but I do know that it has felt like a fresh challenge and that’s part of what drew me to giving the Olympics a fifth try. My role on the boat [helmsman] has changed, and I’ve needed to grow as a sailor to help us get our best performance.”
McNay and Dallman are among 330 sailors from 65 nations racing in 250 boats starting tomorrow and finishing with medal races Aug. 7. The U.S. has won 61 medals in sailing, second only to Great Britain’s 64 since the modern games started in 1896. McNay enjoys the pomp of the Olympics —who wouldn’t? — but he is in Marseille now, 410 miles from Paris for this simple reason.
“I just enjoy being on the water racing and competing,” he said. “I want to make sure I stay in touch with that reason for being here.”
Rower Emily Kallfelz, 27, prepared for her Olympics debut forever, it seems.
Daughter of former collegiate rowers, she trained religiously on a rowing machine — aka ergometer — at home in Jamestown. She rowed while a student at St. George’s across the Newport Pell Bridge in Middletown and with the Narragansett Boat Club youth program in Providence. She rowed on four Ivy League Championship teams at Princeton, was an All-America, and was USRowing’s Under 23 Female Athlete of the Year in 2018 and 2019. She rowed in the World Junior Championships in 2015 and the World Championships Under 23 from 2016 through 2019. She has experience in single, double and quadruple sculls and is rowing in the Women’s Four at the Olympics.
Kallfelz and her mates finished fourth in their heat last Sunday but won their repechage — second chance — race Tuesday and qualified for the final Thursday at 11:50 a.m. EDT. They will race in Lane 6 against China, New Zealand, Great Britain, Netherlands and Romania.
Marathoner Emily Sisson should make a serious run for the podium when she starts the biggest race of her career on Aug. 11.
The former Providence College star is 32 and in the prime of her athletic life. She finished second in 2:22:42 at the Olympic Trials at Orlando on February 22, 30 seconds behind Fiona O’Keefe. She holds the North American record of 2:18:29 set in 2022 while finishing second at the Chicago Marathon.
Sisson was born in Milwaukee, was a distance star in high school in Nebraska and Missouri and a standout in her first year of running at the University of Wisconsin. UW was not a good fit for her, she has said, so she transferred to Providence College to train with coach Ray Treacy, who has an international reputation as a distance running guru. Under his direction Sisson became a two-time NCAA champion at 5,000 meters, set the indoor 5,000 collegiate record, qualified for the 2020 U.S. Olympic team, and finished 10th in the 10,000 meters at Tokyo. She holds the American record for the half marathon.
Sisson spends part of her year in Providence training with Treacy and working out with his other runners.
URI women’s basketball coach Tammi Reiss is at the Olympics as an assistant coach of the U.S. women’s 3×3 basketball team.
Reiss joined USA Basketball’s 3×3 coaching staff in 2022. She worked the FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series Tour in 2022 and 2023, assisted with the championship World Cup team in 2023 and was head coach of USA and USA U21 teams at the 2023 Women’s Nation League Finals.
Three-on-three basketball is different from the game we are accustomed to playing and watching. Think half-court pickup basketball. The court is only 36 feet long, less than half the 94 feet of a regulation court. The hoop stands at one end, an end line at the other. There is a three-point arc 22 feet out. Shots made inside the arc are worth one point, outside the arc two points. Free throws are a point. Rosters are limited to four players, and a player simply tags a teammate to substitute. The first team to 21 points, or with the most points after 10 minutes, wins. The shot clock is 12 seconds.
Three-on-three debuted three years ago at the Tokyo Olympics. The Americans won the gold medal. This year Team USA lost its opener to Germany, 17-13, in a sloppy contest Tuesday and fell to Azerbaijan, 20-17, Thursday. Up next are Australia, France and China before the semifinals and medal games on Aug. 5.
Reiss has compiled a 93-52 record in five seasons at URI, owns the highest winning percentage, .641, in program history and is the first URI women’s coach to post three consecutive 20-win seasons. She is a two-time Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year.
