Professional sailor John Bertrand has won an Olympic Silver Medal in the Finn singlehanded class, sailed in the America’s Cup as Dennis Conner’s tactician, smashed passage records in offshore races and managed high-profile winning boat campaigns. He has also inaugurated and managed a state-of-the-art big boat one-design class. He is the President of Bertrand Racing.

Bertrand, who lives in Annapolis, Maryland, has been a professional sailor for 25 years, competing and conducting business at the top levels of the sport of sailing. He has won world championships in five classes from one-man Lasers to 80-foot ocean races but the two he savors most are his world championship victories in the Laser and Finn singlehanders. He won his Olympic Silver Medal in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, beaten only by New Zealander Russell Coutts who took the Gold and went to win the America’s Cup.

A sailor since the age of six, when he learned in El Toro dinghies on San Francisco Bay, Bertrand moved on from the Olympics and the America’s Cup to ocean racing. In the forefront of innovation, he oversaw the construction and campaign of the 75-foot ocean racer Windquest, the first “modern” IMS maxi yacht, a concept that was later adopted for the Class A Maxi fleet. In a separate major project, Bertrand led the development of the One Design 48 Class. This was the first big boat class that emphasized the sailing skills of skippers and crews instead of seeking gains through design and manipulating rating rules.

As project manager and skipper for owner Robert McNeil’s Zephyrus campaigns, he headed the crew aboard the 75-foot Zephyrus IV that shattered the Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro Race record by almost two days in 2000 and later broke the Middle Sea Race record in the Mediterranean. Bertrand’s most recent project, the water-ballasted 86-foot Zephyrus V has logged three first-to-finish victories since her launching in May, 2002. In January, 2003, Zephyrus V broke the 32-year-old Pineapple Cup Record for the bluewater passage from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Montego Bay, Jamaica.