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Deceased , Modern
Donald
Cohan
Don
1930 – 2018
A bronze medalist in the Dragon Class at the 1972 Olympics and a Soling National Champion at age 72, Donald Cohan is a sailor who defied the odds of the sailing world on many fronts. He was the first Jewish athlete to win an Olympic medal in yachting for the United States -and possibly in the world. In the 1972 Munich Olympics, he was competing during the Munich Massacre, when terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes. All Jewish athletes were warned to leave but Cohan chose to stay. Not only did he medal at those Olympics but he did so with only five years of racing under his belt. While a cruiser for many years, he did not actively start racing until his late 30s. Aspiring to compete at the highest levels, at age 42, with crew Charles Horter and John Marshall, he won the bronze medal at the 1972 Olympics – one of the oldest competitors to win a yachting medal for the U.S. at the Olympics. After the Olympics, he had a string of championship wins in several different classes including, among others, the Soling, the Flying Dutchman and the Tempest. Don has also owned and raced an eight-metre (on which he honeymooned), six-metre, NY 30, and a 40-foot Luders Sloop. Decades later, after several bouts with cancer, with the attendant chemotherapy and radiation, again defying the odds, he won the 2002 U.S. Soling Championship at the age of 72, held in a windy Houston, Texas. A several-time member of the U.S. Sailing Team – the last time at age 68 – he also represented the U.S. approximately 14 times in Olympic Class World Championships and several times was the top amateur. Dennis Conner has called Cohan a “very competitive, respected sailor who runs a good, clean campaign.” According to Buddy Melges, Cohan’s contributions to our sport “go far beyond his finishes at regattas,” and Ed Baird speaks to not only Cohan’s on-the-water excellence, but “his mentorship and leadership in helping others to learn sailing and to work for the betterment of our sport.” Indeed, this was Donald’s passion. While winning regattas was fun, it was the camaraderie, the mentoring, and the relationships that inspired him the most. He was always offering assistance. In the 1970s, Donald worked with Andy Kostinecki to unite disparate groups of committees into what became USYRU (later US Sailing). For eight years, he was a very active member of the U.S. Olympic Sailing Committee and the U.S. Sailing One-Design Committee and he was a 50-year active board member of the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club. At the age of 85, Don bought an Etchells and successfully raced it that summer in Maine. A Partial List of Accomplishments and Honors Dragon Class Soling Class Other One Design and Keelboat Accomplishments Honors and Volunteer Accomplishments Additional References for Donald S. Cohan Following are two articles that were written about Donald Cohan – one from the Philadelphia Inquirer and one from the Hartford Courant. In the first one, Bob Ford does a nice job of capturing Cohan’s spirit of perseverance and the way in which sailing has played such a large part of Donald’s life in the past four decades. In the second article, June Sandra Neal recounts, in Cohan’s own words, the incredibly traumatic 1972 Munich Olympics, at which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed, along with a German police officer, by a terrorist group.
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