Interview: From The Other Side - The State of the Sport

Inside Great Lakes Sailing - Season 6 - Show 143 - August 2025 © ILGS

The Editors of Inside Great Lakes Sailing and Sail-World New Zealand got together last week to shoot the breeze in an unscripted, unedited, video discussion about various aspects of the sport, in another edition of the PBS-Youtube sailing show, Inside Great Lakes Sailing.

The two come from completely different backgrounds, hemispheres and salinities.

Greg Normand is based in Detroit, in the Great Lakes region, and was a professional journalist contributing a daily column for 25 years, about financial and business issues for the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group, the New York Times, the Associated Press and a wide variety of magazines and publications as a freelance writer. For the past six years he has run the PBS-Youtube sailing show, Inside Great Lakes Sailing, which covers sailing and sailors in the Mid-West as well as interviews with many of the leading figures in the sport.

Richard Gladwell is based on the shores of the Hauraki Gulf, in Auckland, and has a competitive amateur NZ and international sailing background. He moved from being a club and class reporter to becoming as a freelance sailing journalist in late 1983 for several NZ sailing magazines. He shifted into online sailing coverage as the NZ Editor of Sail-World.com in 2005. He has covered ten Olympics and 12 America's Cups either remotely, or on the water as an accredited photographer/journalist, as well as a myriad of other sailing events, boats and contretemps. A former Int. Judge and Umpire, he has authored three books on various America's Cups.

As independent sailing journalists from the Other Side (neither do/have worked for Teams or Events), they expounded their personal views on the current America's Cup Protocol and the Cup generally; Women's participation at the highest levels of the sport, and whether the America's Cup quota positions will be effective.

They have different different perspectives on the coverage sailing gets in the mainstream media. Gladwell explains the Kiwis' talent development "process" at an America's Cup level - more an accident of geography; and there's a wide ranging, unscripted discussion, which concludes with an anecdote about Greg's first meeting with a Kiwi sailor named Russell.

Inside Great Lakes Sailing is now in its sixth season with over 140 shows.

You can see interviews with many of the identities of the sport, including Paul Goodison, Dennis Conner, Gary Jobson, Dave Reed, Charlie Enright, Dan Riley, Tom Ehman, Dick Carter, Libby Lindquist, Scot Tempesta, Terry Hutchinson, Paul Cayard and many more people and events from the Mid-West, USA and beyond.

You can catch it at www.youtube.com/@insidegreatlakessailing1004