by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
Every athlete who made it to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing has a story to tell. They have all endured great challenges and years of training and competition to make it to the top of their sport and earn the privilege of representing their country among an international field.
The personal story of one of America’s Olympic athletes, boardsailor Nancy Rios, includes a chapter featuring Jacksonville attorney Tom Ingram.
The 20-year-old Rios represents U.S. Sailing and competes in the Women’s RS:X Class. She is the only American woman in the boardsailing competition that will wrap up this week at the Olympic Sailing Center in Qingdao, China.
“It’s a small seaside town of about 5 million people,” said Ingram, who met Rios through his own interest in windsurfing.
Ingram specializes in land use and zoning issues but had to get up to speed on international amateur athletic competition when he was contacted by Rios who thought he might be able to help her with a legal issue.
The story began last October when Rios was competing in the Olympic Trials in Long Beach, Calif. Before the 16th and final race, Rios and Farrah Hall, a boardsailor from Annapolis, Md. were within two points of each other for the spot on the U.S. Olympic Team.
Shortly after the start of the race another competitor accidentally collided with Rios while Rios had the right-of-way. Her sail dropped and was torn. Hall was also bumped in the incident, but got away clear and sailed away to win the race. Rios lost more than 30 seconds due to the mishap and finished fourth.
“She could have finished first, second or third and gone to China,” said Ingram, who added that’s when the legal side of sailing came into play and led to his involvement.
Ingram said after the race, Rios requested redress from the race’s Protest Committee due to her score having been made significantly worse by the actions of another competitor who violated the right-of-way rules.
“The ability to request redress is a standard part of the International racing Rules of Sailing used in thousands of sailing and windsurfing races every year around the globe,” he added.
Two of the three members of the committee saw the incident on the water when it occurred and after inspecting the tear and reviewing the circumstances, the committee awarded the standard redress, which is an average of her scores in the prior races, in this case a 2, which would put Rios in first place overall.
That’s when things began to get interesting, said Ingram.
The next day, after the written deadline for filing challenges to decisions of the Protest Committee, Hall began a campaign to overturn the redress decision. She assembled a team that included a professional sailor who was involved in Dennis Conner’s Americas Cup campaigns, a windsurfing sail designer, two public relations firms and a team of lawyers.
“They were four wonderful Ivy League attorneys from San Francisco,” said Ingram.
What ensued was four months of litigation that led to an arbitration hearing in May in Providence, R.I. Ingram said he and Rios were up against Hall’s team of attorneys and expert witnesses, who presented evidence and testimony for two days.
“Though the statutory rights conferred to athletes focus on whether the Olympic Team selection process that is used is free from corruption and is otherwise fair to all of the athletes involved, Hall’s evidence and arguments focused on whether the Protest Committee had correctly ascertained the facts and weighed them properly in determining whether to grant redress to Rios,” said Ingram.
Following the testimony presented by Hall’s attorneys, Ingram and the counsel from U.S. Sailing moved for a directed verdict in favor of the respondents, a request that is rarely granted, Ingram said because “The arbitrator or judge would have to conclude that, taking the petitioner’s evidence in its best possible light, the petitioner would have to be found to have not established any basis by which relief could be granted.”
In this case, however, that’s exactly what happened. After deliberating for just a few minutes, the arbitrator (who like Ingram was working on a pro-bono basis) granted the directed verdict, sending Rios to the Olympics.
“It’s kind of ironic because the United States is not a strong contender in women’s windsurfing,“ said Ingram. At press time, Rios was in 26th place in the 27-competitor field and not expected to participate in Wednesday’s medal round. That doesn’t diminish Ingram’s satisfaction over prevailing on her behalf.
“As a land use attorney, I have yet to see a courtroom. I can tell you it was both an exciting and stressful experience but it was entirely worth it. It has been a thrill to see Nancy at the opening ceremonies in Beijing and competing on the water in Qingdao. She is a great ambassador for our country and for the sport of windsurfing. Representing her was a unique opportunity to combine my hobby with my profession,” he said.
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