I do not know John Lovell but do know Lars, not well, but through the A-Class. It seems to me from our conversations that he walked away from the Olympics due to the extreme cost of campaigning. I know that there were some personal considerations involved as well, but cost still was an overiding factor. Watching Lars race at the A-Class mid-winters and pre-worlds was nothing short of amazing. It is difficult to understand the whole allocation of grants to sailors. It seems that we will only support one at a time, especially in the Tornado class and then it is at a bare minimum only. There is a great interview with John and Charlie on the Tornado website tornado.org from around the time of the worlds as well as one with Darren & Glenn. Both these interviews spell out quite a bit of the difficulties involved with campaining a boat at the Olympic level, especially in dealing with the overwhelming financial and fundraising issues. If there were greater availability to grants, sponsership and other sources to defer the costs, you might have a Lars Guck and others competing at the Olympic level instead of having a one boat show of it. How do classes such as the Star class have 4-6 truly competitive boats for the trials and the Tornado class has only one, possibly two contenders? Support and development needs to begin earlier then it now does and funding needs to be looked at in a different manner than it currently is. Whether funding is setup through US Sailing, OSC, boat sponsership and other means does not matter right now because it just does not work. I do not have an answer to this issue, but know that it needs addressing.