It would be a gut-wrenching decision for anyone, let alone a college freshman full of energy, ambition and a love of the water.
The options bone cancer gave Hugh Freund were stark: Have his right leg amputated below the knee and use a prosthetic leg for the rest of his life or have the tumor removed and his leg reconstructed with perhaps less certain results.
Nine years ago, that decision came easily to the South Freeport native.
“It was totally a conscious decision on my part,” Freund recalled. “It was going to improve my quality of life to take the leg rather than rebuild it, so it was done totally with the thought in my mind that I wanted to be back running, skiing, biking, hiking — you name it.”
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital did the rest, and today the 28-year-old not only can run, ski, bike and hike again, he’s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with Rick Doerr of Clifton, New Jersey, and Brad Kendell of Tampa, Florida, representing the United States in the Sonar sailing class at the 2016 Paralympic Games.
The U.S. entry is one of 14 boats competing in an 11-race regatta that starts Monday and continues through next Saturday at the Marina de Gloria in Copacabana. Each boat competes in all 11 races, with points compiled in the 10 best performances determining who earns a spot on the medal stand.
“The fleet is pretty deep,” Freund said. “I’d say there are at least seven teams with a really good shot at the podium, and all of them have either a World Cup medal, a world championship medal or a Paralympic medal, if not multiple medals.”
That includes the U.S. three-person keelboat maneuvered by Freund, Doerr and Kendell that won the Para Sailing World Championship at the Netherlands in late May.
“I’d say that of the teams that can contend we have the least Paralympic experience. Rick has been there once, and Brad and I have never been there,” Freund said. “But we’re right there. We’re the team that just won the world championship a couple of months before the games, so that’s setting the bar pretty high.”
Tragedy breeds opportunity
Freund took up sailing as a youngster with his buddies at the Harraseeket Yacht Club in Freeport, where 2016 U.S. Olympic sailing team member and University of Southern Maine graduate David Hughes of Yarmouth was an instructor.
“My family’s not a major sailing family, but the yacht club was about a mile away from my house,” he said. “A bunch of my friends, their parents were members, and when my friends turned 8 they all said they were going to sailing camp, and I said, ‘sounds good.’
By age 11 and 12, Freund was traveling from Boothbay to Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, to compete in local regattas and Junior Olympic events hosted by U.S. Sailing.
He went on to attend Waynflete School in Portland, and Freund sailed for two his first two years there on a SailMaine collaboration involving students from several Portland-area schools before joining Waynflete’s crew team as a junior.
As college approached he knew he wanted to continue competing on the water, so Freund opted for Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, which had a sailing program.
“I ended up not sailing there at all because I was studying architecture and there wasn’t time for both,” he said. “I ended up going to two practices.”
Freund completed one semester at Roger Williams before being diagnosed with sarcoma, which forced him to take the next two semesters off for surgery and drug treatments that have left him cancer free for the last nine years.
“The fact was I had cancer, and it was going to take my leg off — that was fine,” he said. “It was an active choice. I wasn’t burdened by the decision. I wasn’t the victim in this situation. I was totally taking control.
“I didn’t really experience a long period of being down after surgery because I went from treatment right back to the university, right back into classes, and then shortly thereafter right into sailing.”
Freund’s return to the sport as a Paralympic athlete was facilitated by Roger Williams sailing coach Amanda Callahan, who contacted U.S. Sailing Paralympic team coach Betsy Alison on his behalf.
“Paralympic sailing sort of found me; I didn’t find it. But it definitely became an awesome, awesome part of my recovery because it all happened pretty quick,” he said.
Within a few months Freund connected with Doerr, who had just been part of Team USA’s Sonar class boat at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, and Freund’s Paralympic sailing career continued simultaneously with his final three years of undergraduate studies at Roger Williams.
“I couldn’t miss class to go to sailing practice there, but I could miss class to go to Europe for Paralympic events,” Freund joked. “I talked to the dean and told him I had this pretty cool opportunity to do some sailing at the top level of Paralympics, and he said, ‘If there’s any way we are not able to do this, then something’s wrong. It’s way too cool of an opportunity for you to pass up.
“I said, ‘Thank you, sir, let’s make it happen,’ and we did.”
The Paralympic quest
Freund and Doerr met in late 2008 and Kendell soon joined them, and since then the trio has combined to win seven Sailing World Cup medals over two Paralympic cycles. In 2015, they also became the first Paralympic-level team to win the Sunbrella Golden Torch Award, given to the top American performer at Sailing World Cup Miami, North America’s top Olympic and Paralympic regatta.
But the team came up short in its bid to qualify for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, placing second in the qualifying competition for the lone available berth.
“I was disappointed,” Freund said, “but I was a little more frustrated with myself because I expected to be there and that was the wrong way to approach things. There’s no entitlement at this level. Every single piece is earned, there’s nothing given away for free and the other team knew that and just worked harder than we did. It was a good lesson.”
It wasn’t long before the teammates determined that their Olympic aspirations represented unfinished business and that the 2016 Paralympics in Rio were a logical goal.
“It was an easy decision for me personally,” Freund said. “We had to do a pretty major re-evaluation of our program all the way from the equipment we had to how we were pushing training to how we were interacting as a team and what we needed to work on as a team. We also needed to find a new coach to bring us to a different place from where we had been.”
That self-analysis and the subsequent work required to correct the issues that led to the team’s 2012 frustration not only has already produced a world championship, but Freund, Doerr and Kendell have been the top-performing American Sonar team since London.
“You can point to a lot of different things,” Freund said. “We got way more organized about our training and we got a second boat and did a lot of work making sure both boats were in really good condition. We spent a lot of time making sure our equipment was optimized for how we needed to sail the boat.”
They also got a new leader in coach Mike Ingham of Rochester, New York.
“He’s been a rock star for our team and really made a huge difference,” Freund said. “It’s pretty noticeable if you look at the results. We’ve picked up two World Cup medals, qualified the country and qualified for ourselves for the Paralympics and won a world championship, all in the space of two years.”
Freund and his teammates have been frequent visitors to the Paralympics’ host city this summer, twice for training camps and again during the Olympics last month for some final work on their boat.
Now they’re back in Rio, taking in the majesty of the Paralympic village while anticipating their chance to sail.
“It’s pretty mind-blowing how massive the scale is here,” Freund said. “I’m looking out my window and can see 10 towers including ours, and each is 18 to 20 stories tall and they’re all covered in flags. In between is a huge plaza with a bunch of fountains, a skate park, lots of green areas and a track where people are running around. There’s four pools, tennis courts, soccer courts where you see people practicing. It’s a pretty cool vibe and quite beautiful.”
