Paul Bert Elvstrøm

Paul Elvstrøm

Paul Elvstrøm c. 1972
Personal information
Full name	Paul Bert Elvstrøm
Nationality	Danish
Born	(1928-02-25)25 February 1928 Hellerup, Denmark
Died	7 December 2016(2016-12-07) (aged 88) Hellerup, Denmark
Height	1.82 m (5 ft 11 1⁄2 in)
Weight	85 kg (187 lb)
Sailing career
Class(es)	5.5 Metre, 505, Finn, Firefly, Flying Dutchman, Snipe, Soling, Star, Tornado
Club	Hellerup Sejlklub, Gentofte
Medal record Representing  Denmark International athletics competitions Event 1st 2nd 3rd Olympic Games 4 0 0 World Championships 11 2 2 Total 15 2 2 Olympic Games 1948 London Firefly class 1952 Helsinki Finn class 1956 Melbourne Finn class 1960 Rome Finn class World Championships 1957 La Baule 505 class 1958 La Baule 505 class 1958 Zeebrugge Finn class 1959 Copenhagen Finn class 1959 Porto Alegre Snipe class 1962 St. Petersburg Flying Dutchman class 1966 Copenhagen 5.5 metres class 1966 Kiel Star class 1967 Copenhagen Star class 1969 Copenhagen Soling class 1974 Sydney Soling class 1956 Burnham Finn class 1969 San Diego Star class 1971 New York Soling class 1985 Travemünde Tornado class

Paul Bert Elvstrøm (25 February 1928 – 7 December 2016) was a Danish yachtsman. He won four Olympic gold medals and eleven world titles in eight different types of boat, including Snipe, Soling, Star, Flying Dutchman and Finn.

Elvstrøm competed in eight Olympic Games from 1948 to 1988, being one of only six persons ever (the others are sailor Ben Ainslie, swimmer Michael Phelps, wrestler Kaori Icho, and athletes Carl Lewis in the long jump and Al Oerter in the discus) to win four consecutive individual gold medals (1948–60), first time in a Firefly, subsequently in Finns. In his last two Olympic games he sailed the very high performance Tornado Catamaran class, which, in those days, was normally sailed by two young men, with his daughter Trine Elvstrøm as forward hand.

Elvstrøm was also noted as a developer of sails and sailing equipment. One of his most successful innovations was a new type of self-bailer. The design is still in production under the Andersen brand and has been widely copied. The new features were a wedge shaped venturi that closes automatically if the boat grounds or hits an obstruction, and a flap that acts as a non return valve to minimise water coming in if the boat is stationary or moving too slowly for the device to work. Previous automatic bailers would be damaged or destroyed if they met an obstruction, and would let considerable amounts of water in if the boat was moving too slowly.

Elvstrøm was a very early innovator in training techniques. For example, he used the technique of 'sitting out' or hiking using toe-straps to a greater degree than previously, getting all his body weight from the knees upwards outside the boat, thus providing extra leverage to enable the boat to remain level in stronger winds and hence go faster than his competitors. This technique required great strength and fitness, so Elvstrøm built a training bench with toe-straps in his garage to replicate the sitting-out position in his dinghy. He then proceeded to spend many training hours on dry land sitting out on the bench at home.